“don’t forget about the dandelion” my sister tells me, and i nearly cry remembering the gangly-looking thing she brought me years ago, saying God had told her to give it to me. saying it represented my writing career.
“i wanted to give you a flower, but he said, the dandelion,” she says now, laughing.
i smile but my heart is sore. it’s been three years since my agent took me on, after my first book got published with a small canadian press, and the CBA has rejected my memoir about mum and my non-fiction about eating disorders (they don’t want to publish unknowns, my agent says), and so now, i’m writing fiction.
and it’s been like birthing, this tearing of words from my soul, and i get it now, this “labor of love,” because i battle through the pages. i sit at my keyboard and weep the characters into existence and i beg God through it all, don’t let me waste my time.
for i have two little boys now, and a journalism career, and art… so why keep on trying?
“he told me to give you the tallest one,” my sister says of the dandelion, “because the seeds will blow far.”
it takes a special person to see a weed as a flower. i’m praying, now, for this kind of faith.
“did you know that everyone is writing a novel these days?” i ask my husband when the children are bathed and powdered and tucked into sleep.
“yeah, something like one in every 10 people,” he says.
i sigh.
“and one in every 1,000 gets published,” he continues.
i begin to curl into a fetus position.
“but babes,” he says, bending down to my level and looking me in the eye, “you’re one in a million. and i believe in you.”
(shared with ann, jen and laura–three of many writers i greatly admire)
thankful for this:
675. wood-stove heat on -25 degree days
676. speaking to a group of church ladies this wednesday on my journey through anorexia (please pray!)
677. friends who critique my work
678. an agent who says my words are mesmerizing
679. shopping, alone, while husband takes care of the boys
680. family time after baths
681. kasher’s first tooth breaking through