Lest I Forget to Breathe

June 28, 2022

The clouds came in about an hour ago and brought relief to a zapping hot day. After an inspiring chat with my Monday Prosers, our newly named writing group, I decided to lift my head out from trying to make sense of the political circus in my home state of Maharashtra and revisit my book Boiling Frogs. I’ve just hit send on an agent query letter. 

 

It’s scary sending out these letters. Each agency and sometimes each agent within the agency wants different things in the query. A synopsis, chapters, chapter summaries — and make sure you number and label everything just right! It feels nerve racking. I’m at the point that I no longer feel anyone will want my book and sending out the query is futile and simultaneously I eagerly wait for a response. One that often never comes. Very few promise they will reply. 

 

I have sent out fifteen so far for this book and have got seven rejections. Each time I send out one I feel like my chances of getting a yes diminish. I mean if this one rejects me too, I have one fewer agency to send a query to. I also have one more chance of being rejected. Sounds too negative and I need to say instead — this is the one, this is the one, she has to want me, how could she not? Does sending out positive vibes really change the outcome? Can’t hurt.

 

Rejections take a while to get over. They feel like a physical blow. I often see the email while I am sitting next to someone, watching TV, reading, sometimes even having a happy chat. I scan it quickly and then close it, continue smiling and don’t tell the person that I am chatting with, even if it is my spouse, that I got another rejection. I can’t tell anyone till 24 or 48 or 72 hours have passed. I can’t even think about it myself. 

 

It's a book I spend years pouring over and into. It contains so much of my blood and sweat and love and more. It feels like I am no good. Everything I do is no good. For a week, sometimes much more. Then it takes a while to gather courage to send another out. Maybe the best strategy is to send it out before the 8-12 weeks deadline of when you might hear from the agent.

 

Talking to the Monday Prosers left me longing to write again. Even though all of them, just three others, feel like real writers and me an imposter, they treat me like I am a writer too, or like all of us are posers. I hadn’t spoken to them since before my trip to India. After the chat a glimmer of an idea, for my temple story, zipped through me. 

 

It is time to detach from feeling so low with all that is going on in India. Maybe write some fictional characters who are feeling what I am feeling so I can put distance from it and yet indulge my obsession. It is a way I process my most intense feelings, the ones I am too scared to feel but can allow my characters to feel. 

 

Often, I am this person who feels like I should not be happy until everyone in the world is. Trying to find balance with the way I spend my mental-hours — between that which I cannot change but also cannot turn away from, and the life that I can influence. Lest I forget to breathe, to live this life as fully as I desire.