March, 2000

My writing goals are all set.  Yesterday at our regular Tuesday editing meeting, everyone seemed overwhelmed by my goals as I set them in the middle of the table for people to review.

This morning I understand their wide eyes.

One week after drafting the goals, as I sit and review them to guide today’s work, my stomach churns, my lungs hold still, and my brain goes numb!  Two articles?  This week?  Along with two queries to magazine editors and all the rest?  What was I thinking last week?  Today, if I write even one paragraph, I’ll be lucky.  How did I ever get the nerve to make such a bold plan?

Then, settling into the challenge, I sit at the desk pouring through the stack of note cards I made last week, one for each of the different chapters of the different books surrounding me in piles on the filing area arranged on the floor.  Fifty note cards.  Last week I was filled with nerve.  I had no time to write, but plenty of time to imagine.  And I imagined what a writer could do with notebooks filled with chapters and articles, none of which have ever seen the light of day.  Well, she could submit them, of course.  And I imagined a writer sitting down, giving serious attention to the task at hand, opening the Writer’s Guide, picking out a suitable market for an article, printing off four pages of double-spaced, and folding it into an envelope.

I imagined what a writer could do with reams of journal pages filled with article ideas, all sorts of silent articles, silent because she had never asked one single editor if he thought these brilliant ideas might work out for his magazine.

And I imagined a writer, after a stiff cup of coffee, outlining a great article and thinking of one lousy little sentence to tell exactly how exciting the idea would look on page 32 of Perfect Magazine if the editor would only say yes.  One lousy, little one-page letter, one envelope, one SASE, and one stamp.

And if, reviving my visions born of idle courage last week, if I believed my imagination and gathered my nerve, if I poured just one more cup of coffee…well…then, today I think I could really have one lousy little envelope ready to mail, laid by the door, and almost on its way to the post office before the end of the day, before Victor walks in the front door tonight, home from work, asking, “What did you do today?”