Committing the cardinal sin, that’s where: I let it get to me.
And the worst thing? The most inane? It was the robot that did it.
A month or so ago, I finally let just a little bit of Bunk out to play on this website. I was hoping it would make friends with a few of you. Trigger some responses. Up the conversational ante. Lure a few more of you over to play.
Instead, it brought crashing silence, and then a spam-bot, which infested the blog with virus, got it temporarily restricted on google, and ensured ongoing invisibility for the book on which I’ve pretty much staked my career. Or at least the last decade and a half of my life.
Naturally– this being a writer’s website, where even katydids are supposed by some to dream, where silence lays steadily against the pixels and characters of glenblog, and whatever walks here, walks alone– it was the robot, not the commentless post about the novel, that triggered the existential blizzard. The why-bothers (not with writing, can’t help that, but with showing, with selling, with sharing). The poor-mes (because the book deserves to be read, damn it; or, worse, because I’ve somehow convinced myself it does when it doesn’t). The I’ll-just-take-my-blog-and-go-homes.
That didn’t last long. Longer than robot-driven dark nights of soul should have, but just a few days. Then finals happened. Then news about furloughs and the very possible reality of having to reconstruct completely the other, supposedly more stable girders from which I’ve built my family’s life.
And then, of course, the new project. Of which I’m saying nothing at this point. I’ve learned my lesson.
And then the embarrassment. Not about not selling the novel yet, or anything like that. But about my little panic-attack. Because I’m 43 years old, have been at this all my life, and should know better.
Do know better.
And the whole point of this blog was to document this process, partially to keep myself sane (cue laugh track) but at least as much to provide others going through it with some company. No advice. No secret passwords to the promised land, wherever that is and whatever you’re imagining it promises. But stories for the road.
I forgot that, momentarily.
I won’t again.