Yes, Please

What’s the hardest part about writing a book? Well, after working on one for three years (that’s 1,095 days) I can now confirm that it is not the Carpal tunnel syndrome in your fingers. It is not the constant need to change batteries in your keyboard. It’s not having your eyes bug out of your head after 10 straight hours of typing. It’s not getting stuck on a section that isn’t going anywhere, keeping a storyline coherent for 200+ pages, coming up with another word for “however,” or finally deciding on a title that’s already been taken.

It’s not any of those things, actually.

What it is, however,  is releasing your finished product into the hands of the wild. By this, I mean sending it out to those (agents, publishers, sadists, etc.) who can actually do something with it.

Let me explain. You take your brain-child, wrap it up in a tiny bow, hand it off to perfect strangers, and say “Here, hope you like it.” Meanwhile, you sit at home for 6-8 weeks with enormous amounts of something called “free time” and wait for a response, which (for me) usually looks something like this:

Breathless at times.

Useless at times.

I just wasn’t gravitating to it.

This isn’t right for me.

I’ll have to pass.

After much consideration,…

Unfortunately,…

No.

It’s the equivalent of hearing your baby isn’t cute, or you look fat in the dress that made you feel skinny, or that all of your coworkers threw up after they ate your famous red velvet cupcakes. It’s harsh, unrelenting at times, and it resets your self-worth to zero. In other words, it’s Regina George x 1,000 on a Wednesday when she’s wearing pink.

But just when I was about to second guess myself, I heard this:

Yes.

That’s right. I received a yes from a publisher on my manuscript, 86′d. And not only was it a yes, it was a resounding yes. A hell yes. The type of yes a New York Times bestseller gets. That kind of a yes.

All it takes is one. One person to see your vision. To feel your spirit. To stay up until 3:30 in the morning turning the pages in a book you wrote as they laughed, cried, and shook their head in disbelief. To be warmed in their heart and compelled to contact you and say: Yes.

Stay tuned. But in the meantime, if this isn’t 40 under 40 material, I don’t know what is

The Long and Short of It

Someone once told me the hardest emotion to express is happiness for someone else.

One week after I quit my job, they send my former colleague to Mexico for an all-expense-paid trip. Seriously?

One of my old college classmates wrote a screenplay whose main character is based off of myself, and it’s in the final stages of selling for nearly $6 million dollars. Really?

And on top of that, everyone I know is engaged, married, pregnant with their first child, pregnant with their second child, or changing their Facebook profile picture to a shot of their brand new home. Mazel, everyone. Mazel.

I don’t know why this emotion is so hard. All you have to do is take one one-hundredth of a percent of how happy any of these people are, apply it to yourself, aim it back at them, and you’re done: you’ve successfully managed to share in someone else’s excitement. Yet still, this almost always remains a mission impossible – even (especially) for me.

Just when I was about to give up any hope that I could ever feel some semblance of joy toward anyone else’s good fortune, success, or talents, I heard Long Kounthapanya sing.

Long shared the cubicle next to me when we worked in a three-person creative department at a dying ad agency in Omaha, Nebraska. He barely ever said a word and almost always was glued to his Mac working on some inDesign file well beyond my comprehension. In fact, for the first six months I worked there, I honestly couldn’t tell you what his voice sounded like. He never spoke.

But then one night, he posted a link on my Facebook wall to a video of him looking into a webcam. I was concerned. But as any inquiring mind would do, I clicked the link and soon dropped my jaw.

Long was singing a cover of John Legend’s “Everybody Knows.” Regardless of not knowing what his speaking voice sounded like, his singing voice – quite simply – was the best I had ever heard.

At first Long put a lock on the video, affixing the privacy setting so that only I could see the video. This thwarted my initial reaction, which was to share it with everyone I knew. Alas, I respected his wishes as I waited for the day he came out of his shell.

That day has come.

And while normally I’d feel threatened or jealous by someone else my age “making it” while I continue to wait for my own creative ventures to pop-off, I truly want nothing more than for Long to  be nothing short of the very best. I want him to go far. To go wide. To be played on the radio. To be heard on TV. To elicit an emotional reaction from everyone who hears him.

Starting with you: HEAR LONG’S VOICE

Mom is the Word

This morning, I boarded a Red Line train. As it turned out, we’d be sitting there for about 10 minutes due to equipment failure. Surprise, surprise.

During this time, the conductor left the doors open for passengers. I assume this was a gesture to make it feel a little less like hell, however that didn’t stop unknowing on-boarders from rushing down the stairs and into the first available car thinking they caught the train just in the knick of time. Silly, rabbits.

Packed in like sardines, we awaited the elusive “Doors closing” memo. And when it finally came, a woman holding her child stampeded through the doors. “You are all gonna need to move,” she shouted. “I have a child.”

You have a child? Well, I have a job to get to and the right to a cubic centimeter of personal space, so…rock, paper, scissors?

Despite using her child as a riot shield, no one willingly accommodated her demand. Had the child been in some sort of distress or danger, perhaps this would be different. But short of getting off the train to create room, this woman and her golden ticket would simply not fit. So she tested the laws of physics and charged into the crowd, baby face first.

Now, let it be known, I do not have children of my own. And one day, when I do, I completely plan on using them to obtain popular children’s menu items that haven’t been available to me since turning 12. But that’s as far as I’ll go in terms of milking the system.

That said, it doesn’t take having a child to know that “motherly fashion” still needs to be “orderly fashion.” I know you’re tired, have been pooped on, have little-to-no disposable income anymore, but you may not act like a frazzled, entitled mess simply because you have offspring. You may not let your children turn a restaurant into a playground when there are other patrons present. You may not block narrow aisles with your stroller full of shopping bags. You may not leave your children for others to watch while you tweet about a sale at Lululemon from the ordering line at Starbucks.

What can you do? You can board the lifeboats on the Titanic first. That’s what you can do.

I love children, I really do. I just do not love the parents who seem to have forgotten the importance of playing nice with others.