I managed to keep my Beta alive
for almost two years—a record for me with Betas—but last week he finally
departed to the great fish bowl in the sky after a battle with fungus that we
couldn’t get under control despite our best alchemical efforts. I’m debating
getting a new fish. I like water creatures, and I enjoy having a little
mini-ecosystem to look after. But an ecosystem is a lot of work, especially for
Betas, since they have such a narrow set of parameters in which they thrive. They
don’t lend themselves well to the careless. I didn’t change the water in right
way and in the right time often enough, and I didn’t have very much patience
with the fussiness it took to keep the aquarium chemically balanced. I’m better
at caring for hearty critters who can handle a little benign neglect, like
my cat Yoshi who I can literally toss outside when he annoys me. I just don’t know if I’m ready for the responsibility
of another Beta. It’s time like these when I think, “God, I would have made
such a great mom!”
I’ve been trying to make a habit
of typing up my dreams in the mornings after I first wake up, just in case my
unconscious has some super-important message it’s trying deliver. I don’t want to
miss anything. After a few weeks, I’m not seeing any compelling symbolic
patterns or Lotto numbers coming up, but I have faith. I jotted this one down in
my pre-coffee haze a few mornings ago: “Dream thought: What if our great
spiritual lesson as human beings is not about how to cultivate love and
compassion, but about how to tolerate boredom?” A catalogue of random symbols
that have shown up over the last month include an extremely menacing black
adder who exposed his fangs at me, moving bridges of light over a wide river, a
mountain made of fine white crystals, a red leather-bound book that didn’t
contain the poem I was looking for, and a special device that was gifted to me,
designed to help me see in the fog. The catch was that it had an aperture that
could be narrowed, which made the light beam much brighter, but covered far
less of an area, or it could be opened wider, which would put out a weaker beam
but a provide wider expanse of light. Apparently, even my dreams demand
compromise.
I’m almost done with the second
draft of the novel! I have three specific scenes I need to cut into the last
fifty pages, and I can feel myself running out of mental stamina, so I need to write
them sooner than later. I started one of the scenes last week, but quickly
realized it’s not really pushing the plot forward; it’s more like re-hashing
just to control the pacing. So I have to re-write it to make it more relevant
to the plot. That, and just a few more nips and tucks, and I’m going to
consider it complete. My goal is to have it done by June, and then start figuring
out which publishers it would be a good fit for it. My friend will help me with a query letter and a summary,
and then it’s off to races with submitting queries. I’ve been reading up on the
query process a bit more in preparation, and pre-steeling myself for the inevitable
avalanche of rejection to come. But still, I’m keeping a bright little packet
of hope tucked in my heart that something will come of this journey.
--Kristen
McHenry
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