The Sun Rises where it Sets

We spend years writing our books. Finding the pulse of them, taking the risk of them, summoning our own courage in the daunting face of them. Say what you want. Tell your own stories about writers you may have met who seemed so sure-footed, so self-contentedly fierce, so immune to the critic: At the kernel of every writer is a bleeding, tender spot.

Yesterday this thing happened: An editor read a book that I have written and re-written at least a dozen times over the past few years. That historical novel that I sometimes reference here. This editor is the only who has read these pages as these pages (my agent, bless her, read a very early draft early last year), and while I know that the chances of being published these days are slim, and while the fate of this novel is anything but secure, I wanted, to begin with, to know if at least one other would join me in the journey this novel takes. To know if it might be as alive for another as it is for me. In the midst of preparing taxes yesterday morning, the editor's words came in. The generosity of them went straight to my own bleeding, tender spot.

I stood from my desk. I walked to my window. I cried.

Today this other thing happened: My friend Jayne Anne Phillips, who has worked for nine years on a novel she's called Lark and Termite (I've written about her in this blog, I've written about this miraculous story) received a most exquisitely glowing review in this morning's New York Times. The sort one dreams of getting one's whole writerly life long. I saw Jayne Anne's photo (she looks beautiful as ever), read the review, and did a little dance for her.

It's not always doom and gloom in publishing. Sometimes writers find readers who will live their books with them.