Offri un caffè a L.J. Longo

Believe it or not, that toothless goblin-child had already finished a novel.

Okay, okay. It was a single-spaced 16 page cacophony of plagiarized country music lyrics, Disney plots, and mythological hand-me-down. But in my mind it was a finished novel.

The next day, I gave it to my English teacher to read, hoping for some solid advice on what I should do next with my great American novel.

She told me not to quit my day job.

I got detention for my response to my first rejection.

*

I have yet to meet a writer who did not write stories when they were little. Some of us wrote in used school notebooks; some of us stole yellow legal pads. Some of us had old typewriters or wrote on the inside of paper bags.

I wonder if my English teacher was little girl like that? I wonder if she wrote stories about her dolls on butcher paper or if she had a fancy pen and a gold-edged journal.

Either way, at some point of time she gave up. The agony of bringing the world in her head to imperfect life, of facing rejection or worse indifference, defeated her.  made her the kind of person who looks a child in the eye and tells then to give up.

*

I don't think art is suffering, but good writing requires hard work, mental energy, and a whole lot of time. I carve out little pieces of time away everyday to get the next bit of my story down, to build that description of a sunset, to give voice to that sparkling wit or that demented rake.

It takes a whole lot more time to edit the thing once it’s written to take that cacophony of images and words and turn them into the full-fledged novellas and novels with the ability to take flight in the mind of a reader. And even then, as they fly toward you each story has to dodge rejection, self-doubt, and the harsh realities of the publishing world, to land safely as a book in your lap or on your kindle.

So thank you for reading my daydreams. I hope they bring you happiness or at least a temporary escape from your troubles. I also hope, you’ll understand the incredible journey it takes for each of those daydreams to reach you as a story.

And if you do understand, I hope you’ll that of all the heart-break that toothless little goblin went through to grow-up into an older much more tooth goblin with several published novels.

And buy that brat a cup of coffee.

Or, you know... treat yourself a book from Evernight or Amazon.