Trying

If you don’t enter the lion’s den, you will never capture the lion. Seung Sahn

Finally, a sunny day with rumors of warmth and sunshine for the whole rest of the week. It feels like a huge weight lifted from my shoulders and mood. It was a long, gray winter and spring. And truthfully, I’m not sure I should believe those rumors either, but I am going to bask in a bit of sunshine.

I’ve made huge progress on Tie-down. After the critiques from the last contest I studied the comments, decided what rang true for me and what didn’t. Then I fixed a few things and started getting it ready to send out. The query letter and synopsis are nearly finished, too, which is the hardest thing to do. I think about the journey the book and I have made and I’m very proud. If nothing else happens but that I get it to the best work I can do and if I’m proud of it, it will be so much more than I thought I could do a few years ago. Tie-down may end up in a box beneath my bed, I don’t know, but I’ll still be proud.

There have been so many times I almost gave up on this, times I actually did: packing it away for over a year, the fear or heart ache of unpacking it again and the faith I had to find to do it, all taught me more than any workshop could.

I remember how overwhelmed I felt when I opened the box with all the research, notes and the manuscript of Tie-down. I stared at the stuffed full box for a long time, searching my heart and I knew I would be overwhelmed. I had to begin with something small and concise, something that went to the heart of my writing and myself.

But I couldn’t not write and I had to finish this book to ever move on to all the other writing still in me. Somehow, I had to find a way to slip into the lion’s den. Poetry helped more than I thought it would. I’m so glad I took the chance that it would and so glad the idea came to me in that moment of despair.

If I hadn’t taken the chance on the poetry helping me write and begin again with Ella and the Tie-down Man, I wouldn’t have entered the Writer’s Digest Poetry Contest either.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?