Publish And Be Damned

Opportunity, we have been told, is not a lengthy visitor.

And right now, I'm trying to decide what to wear when he arrives and whether he'll take tea or coffee. I'll put stock on tea. I can't make tea myself, just flavoured water which is lukewarm, but I can pass that off as tea with the proper biscuits.

I have a few goals in life.
- Marry rich.
- Invent something.
- Abolish reality television.
et-bleeding-cetera.

My most prominent goal happens to be "Get published." However, with half my works unfinished and the other half unpublished, this has yet to happen yet. I am a writer, sure, but an unpublished one. This is the equivalent of a young girl saying she's a super star because she was booted off "American Idol" without even making it past preliminaries. This would then make me a hack incapable of singing and weighing in heavily on my dancing skills. I can't dance, so we'll leave this metaphor quickly.

The point is this: while I have nothing I can call (yet) a published work, there is always the dream and the chance that someday I will make it. So, I need to find a publisher, an agent, and a miracle.

I may have found just that.

Sparing the specific details, I have come across an opportunity to have one of my complete works passed before the eye of a publisher. By "pass" I mean that he may glance lazily at it as he puts his coffee mug down on top of it as an awkwardly shaped coaster, but he'll see it nonetheless.

Heaven help me, I want that shot.

So, what is stopping me? What is making me stay my hand and shuffle my feet (and if you could see me, I'm fidgeting too)? The possibility of FAILURE.

Yes, failure. The other "F" word. We hate that word, we hate it so much, and we all want it abolished. The problem is, we can't all succeed. We can't all be famous and important and get ahead - for us to get ahead, someone has to fall behind. I have just come upon my move to be one that gets ahead.

But what if I fail? What if I fall behind? Suppose I one day open my P.O. box and find a package inside, containing my manuscript with a rejection letter attached and a coffee ring on the top? This is, sadly enough, a probably reality. But against all that pounds in my chest and all that screams for me not to try, I have to.

So . . . yeah. I said it.
I will be published, or I won't. But that all depends on if I take my shot.