WILLIAMSVILLE — I just saw the galleys for my first book, which was like seeing a sonogram of a baby that's been growing inside me for years. I'm giddy with excitement to see the cover, the type, and the design of the chapters. Like one of those biblical matriarchs, I feel as if I've been waiting 600 years for this birth. In truth, it's only been 25.
In February 1985, I received my first rejection letter for a novel I'd written the previous year. The letter arrived on my 29th birthday, and I despaired of achieving my goal of having a book published before I turned 30.
I didn't start my next novel until ten years later, and I was well into my forties by the time it was complete. It's still not published. I wrote the novel that is coming out this month six years ago, when I was 48.
During the 25 years I've been writing novels, I've also raised a family and worked to help support it. I've done some interesting things, like teaching literature to health-care workers and teaching writing to inmates; I've done some less interesting things, like laundry. I've worried about my children, argued with my husband, witnessed my parents age, and - always - kept writing.
A few years ago, a published friend said to me, “The single thing that separates those who get into print from those who don't is persistence.”
I persisted.
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I have the requisite number of rejection letters to wallpaper not just the fabled bathroom, but also the interior of a small house. Some are simple form letters; others are full of high praise.
I've come to prefer the form letters that start with “Dear Writer” to those that say what a splendid writer I am and what a wonderful book I have - for someone else to publish. There were months when I could have been working in a boomerang factory, when all the typescripts I sent out kept coming back.
But a year ago, I received the letter I'd been waiting for all this time, and this month, my book will be in print.
This long, slow journey has made me wonder what gave me the tenacity to keep writing despite so many other things to do (help with homework, wash dishes, plant peas), and what gave me the chutzpah to keep refusing to accept repeated rejection.
My answer: my cats and my dog.
As Groucho Marx famously said, “Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.” My dog is a great companion, but she's illiterate. She dislikes the indoor, sedentary pleasures of literature. She'd rather be outdoors, on a walk.
I did a lot of thinking on those walks, which are a kind of moving meditation in which I work out narrative difficulties. I also watch my pooch in her mostly futile attempts to catch the chipmunks she sees in the woods.
Despite her dismal record of failure, my dog never fails to take up the challenge. She flings herself over stone walls and gives herself wholeheartedly to the chase. And she's never discouraged by her failure to catch a chipmunk - only by my failure, some days, to take her out for a walk.
My cats, on the other hand, want me to do nothing but sit at my desk all day, so they can drape themselves decorously across my papers, my lap, or my keyboard. They approve of literature, and like to lie across the page of any open book, but especially on the page I'm reading.
One of them likes to watch the cursor progress across my computer screen; the other likes best to curl up in a manuscript box, anchoring the pages in place. As far as they're concerned, the only reason for me to leave my desk is to open a can of cat food.
Between the cats and the dog, I'm blessed with companions who provide inspiration, in the case of the felines, and a model of persistence, in the case of the dog. They have been good company for this long haul. They've helped mitigate the loneliness of writing in silence, a silence, I'm delighted, that ends this month with publication - and readers.