REFLECTIONS ON MY FOURTH REJECTION RE MY MEMOIR SUBMISSION

                       REJECTION HAS FELT WORSE

So the first round of four submissions to top of the line publishers has resulted in a lot of anxt, magical thinking, speculations, second guessing, analyzing, inferring, fretting, feeling resigned, and unexpectedly feeling more resolute than ever to successfully scale this seemingly impossible mountain.

I think my agent was more upset than me this time. I think it was because the rejection came in the form of a short note that was almost a carbon copy of the last two. The cutesy note read while finding  my memoir interesting he "didn't love it enough." So he will pass.

My initial reaction was to E-mail my agent saying: that either I am truly unlovable - that is my work is unlovable - or these four publishers are collectively suffering from an intimacy problem.

Ok - I know - settle down, take it easy, relax, don't take it personally, it typically happens to first time authors, it only takes one, my day {year? Karma in my next life} will come - just hang in there, and so on - nevertheless - it is sobering to be confronted by the harsh fact that my dreams of glory - I believe well deserved - have to be delayed - yet again. {About two weeks while we determine who the next group will be}.

However - something has been happening during the course of this last 6 weeks of this first round submission process that I don't fully understand.  Although this process  is a major challenge that right at the moment appears daunting at best - I am experiencing myself getting tougher. It is similar to an experience I had in my twenties when I was drafted into the army and assigned to basic training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey.

Myself and about 125 other couch potatoes had to get up at 5 AM race around a dirt track, and other physical indignities to "shape up and become fit." By the fourth week of the 8 weeks of basic training, I was fit all right - fit enough to be hospitalized with a horrible virus. By the 4th week the barracks was like a TB sanatorium.Our collective bodies were broken down in the process of supposedly building them up.

But that was only the first half of the story. By the 6th week I felt progressively and unexpectedly stronger. But in the 7th I was sick again.I was to march in a ten mile hike that day with full equipment  including my knapsack, uniform, helmet, and M1 rifle. I was given a thermometer to see how high  my obvious fever was. As the nurse inspected it she said that if my temperature was 101 and a half I would be excused and sent to the infirmary but if it was under I would have to march.

Marching along, feverish and feeling really lousy, uncertain as to whether or not I could continue, I started to laugh. I had the funny thought that if my mother had been alive and she knew that her delicate son was suffering with an abnormally high temperature she would have sued the army.

At that very moment I had an ephiphany. I realized the little marks on the thermometer are arbitrary. It is generally agreed that 98.6 is normal and temperature above or below that agreed upon mark is conventionally considered to be abnormal. And yet despite my abnormality I was walking with full gear - unwell and half delirious - but I was still walking. And when I realized that in reality I wasn't dead yet and that I could continue on - not at my peak - but doable -I got an unexpected surge of energy and confidence. You all see where I am going.

We - my agent and me - will huddle together and tighten up the marketing plan. I will add an epilogue - I will attempt to show how my working with heroin addicts in the sixties in an innovative therapeutic community is as relevant today as it was thirty five years ago. We will emphasize the fact that unlike James Frey's largely fictional account- passed off as non fiction -judged by one reviewer to be the War and Peace of the addiction and recovery scene - my account of behind the scenes as both a professional and as a person who identifed with the problems of my addict population is an absolutely truthful account of the best and worst of treatment of drug addicts - a true non fiction memoir that reads like a dramatic fictional page turner.

There are other things we will do to maximize the probability of success of round two to secure a contract. There is no need to list them as the obvious lesson learned is to continue to be resolute - press on - keep focused with the goal clearly in view.

It is one thing to be on the sidelines encouraging others to keep trying to do their best - but it is quite another to be actually running in this publishing marathon uncertain if there is enough stamina to go the distance. And in this case there is not even the comfort of the certain knowledge that the contest is only 36 miles.

However I know that no matter how much time it takes I will never give this goal up. So in a curious way I feel stronger in my current defeat as I am resigned to the fact that once out of my hands I have no control as to what a prospective publisher will say, but when in my hands I have total control as to what I will do not  do with my already formulated and yet to be expressed libido.