Sink Your Teeth Right Through My Bones, Baby

Snobs

It's the kind of moment that stays with you, and sometimes, like when I'm about to post on LJ or--especially lately--when I send out another novel query after the previous one was rejected again (three for three so far!), I hear those words. They don't wanna know you.

I realize this isn't helpful, and not even true (at least with non-footwear). I've met many people who wanted to know me, though I can't speak for their shoes; and many of these people both still know me and still want to, as far as I can tell. And I know that the people rejecting my novel aren't actually rejecting me. Maybe they'd want to know me if we ever met in person, even if they did describe my novel as 'fairly well written' and 'off-putting' in the same paragraph.

Maybe I wouldn't want to know them, but that's not the point.

Radio Host Jay Smooth, who is a bit of a YouTube celebrity for his commentary on racism, homophobia and gender issues, calls these kind of internal mantras "Little Haters". He has a video about them, which is pretty cool:

And Martin Freeman, lately of The Hobbit but possibly more beloved as Sherlock's Dr. John Watson, told an Entertainment Weekly interviewer that he doesn't read reviews because (to paraphrase, because I can't find it), it wouldn't matter how many awesome reviews he got, he'd only remember the negative ones and they would ruin his life. He has inner haters too.

That's reassuring, of course, to know that even famous people have their they don't wanna know you moments. But it's also discouraging. It'd be nice to think that at some point, somehow, maybe, I'd reach a threshold of success that would mean I didn't have to make the little haters shut up all the time.

Instead, most some days, like right now, it's a constant battle to keep writing, and posting to LJ, and sending out my novel when it seems like no one will ever want it. And to remind myself that they--whomever 'they' actually are--probably do want to know me. Just maybe not my writing.

It's a battle I don't think I'll win, but I'm still trying. And I'm still writing. And that's something, right?

But their shoes would love me. Really.

Photo: "Colorful Sport Shoe" by John Kasawa, via Freedigitalphotos.net

My dreams: Shattered like a beaver dam hit by a maple syrup truck.

Luckily, only metaphorically on fire! But I just found out on Monday that I'm going to have another publication. And, okay, so it's really small and it's my first publication since January, so maybe I'm just smouldering. But considering I never expected this sale in the first place, it's still pretty darn cool. Or freezing, really, but I'll get to that.

See, back in 2000 when they were still the (piping) hottest books in the Self Help section, I tried to have a story published in the then-upcoming Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul. I wrote a true story about helping my mom rescue a pair of ducks who'd nearly gotten themselves frozen into the ice of our pond. Apparently the editors liked the story, but it didn't make it past their test audience (yes, CSftS has test audiences, like movies).

Apparently, the test audiences didn't think the story was 'Canadian Enough'. (But it was about ducks! In Ontario! In Winter! How could that not be Canadian?)

It's like mounties and back bacon. Seriously.

But it wasn't to be, so I moved on to something else and forgot about the story for nearly 14 years. At some point I even erased it from my hard drive.

And then on my birthday, I was contacted by the same editor. The CSftS people had started putting out books again, and she wanted my permission to submit the duck story--which she'd kept for over a decade--for Chicken Soup for the Soul: O Canada! The Wonders of Winter.

I scraped my jaw off the floor and told her yes, of course, and not quite two months later it made the final cut.

On the same day I got that very pleasant email, I read at The Mary Sue that apparently there will be a 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' movie. Because obviously Battleship wasn't sufficiently heart-warming.

So naturally--naturally!--this made me wonder what a CSftS movie about my duck story would be like. And Photoshop and I came up with some doubtlessly Oscar-worthy possibilities:

( The obvious first choice of Sci-Fi/Horror; )

(And these are totally going in the 'Mutation' square of my hc_bingo card).

Quack!