Well the New Year has rolled over again just as I did in bed this morning on the 22,639th day of my life. That's not a big number is it? It sure doesn't seem to be when looking back at how long I've lived. How can it only be that many days?
If I live to make one hundred years of age I will only live for 36,500 days. If you think of a person from infancy to great old age in this time span it makes time seem like fast forward photography.
I'll show you the full life photo album. Here I am as a newborn with plump skin and no resemblance to my adult self and it will take another fifteen to seventeen years to reach full maturity. And here I am at one hundred, my frame somewhat bent and shrunken, the fat under my skin all but gone, age spots all over my skin, teeth that have gone yellow and gums that have receded. The inner corners of my eyes will be slits at the rims have a reddish tinge. The skin on my body will be slack and dried up. I will have knobbly hands and my movements will be slower. I may be incontinent. I may still be able to walk but everyone is afraid I will fall, and if I do I will certainly break bones as they have become as brittle as dried up twigs.
Ah, but my mind, if I keep it intact that long, will be as sharp as a tack and replete with memories that go back so far that the early ones seem to belong to someone else.
At this stage everyone will be waiting for me to die. I have no future, only a past. I am now seen as less than human as I have no potential. I am as loved and as useful as an old couch, but I can't be tossed on the sidewalk. It is strange that a human's worth is in their potential and how much of it they have left.
I'm in a race with time now to publish my first novel written thirty years ago and almost accepted once by a literary agent who asked me to make some small changes and by the time I did, the company had been bought and wasn't taking new writers. I became tired of rejections following this and the cost of postage, of re-formatting the manuscript to every agent and publishers' directives. I had to make a living after all.
I want to still be young enough to enjoy the achievement when the novel is published. Note the 'when' not 'if' in the last sentence. No publisher wants a withered old prune on the back cover even if they had the brain of Einstein or Hawking. I want to revel in the signings, the talks at writers' events, the sense of pride I will have before my son who lost any use for me after he reached the age of twenty.
I've decided to run the gamut of potential publishers again. Time waits for no man after all. Then I have another two novels on the go, one that will be a sure fire seller. I know that in my gut but I'm not waiting to finish it before I give number one novel another try.
When I read it after all these years, I'm amazed I wrote it at all. That's when you know something is good. My star sign says that I am prone to self-doubt and this causes me to undermine myself. That is so true. I should have been pushing the manuscript with a vengeance all these years but I became tired and lost confidence, not in myself but in those to whom the manuscript was sent.
I once sent the manuscript to a publisher using all their guidelines. I included the stamped, self-addressed envelope for their reply. I swear it came back the same week I sent the manuscript. Attached was a "Dear Author" letter. My own name didn't appear and the letter, all three lines of it, was generic. I had the distinct feeling it had landed on a desk, the reply envelope taken out, stuffed with a rejection letter, stamped and sent. That's pretty demoralizing.
My father used to cut and and send me articles about writers who got published. He thought it would inspire me. It did the opposite. It upset me but God bless him for trying. He's passed away now so I'm in no danger of getting another newspaper cutting from him. If I could have him back again it would be the first time I'd enjoy getting one of them. I still, however, wouldn't read it.
Just last year European Space agency scientists landed a robotic probe on a comet. One scientist likened the difficulty of landing the probe on the comet to being like "Landing a washing machine on a speeding bullet."
I think that trying to get a manuscript published is just as hard but nothing's going to happen unless I make the effort. As Captain Kirk says in the new Star Trek, "Make it so." Well this little bulldozer is building up a head of steam and about to spend this year pushing and shoving with all her little might.
Wish me well and you just might get to read a bloody good novel.
END
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