As far as meanings of life go, the best I have been able to come up with so far is to learn as much as humanly possible during your stint on earth. That makes sense to me and seems reasonable. I think if you pay attention you can always learn new things, you just have to pay attention.
I like learning new things. One of the things I miss most about being in university (I would be a professional student if I could) is that every single day for four years I learned something that I didn’t know before and since I’m a nerd, this perpetually blew my mind. Every day the moment would come in a lecture, tutorial or library where I would think to myself, or occasionally exclaim out loud to the unfortunate student beside me, DAMN! I had no idea! And every single day that moment would be followed by a silent reflection along the lines of, whoa, there’s so much that I don’t know! How did I not know that? How have I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THAT BEFORE? What’s wrong with me? How much more do I not know? The world is so big, the universe is so huge, how can I ever know everything that’s important to know? Why am I so ignorant, GAHHHHHHHH! And so forth.
Because I lack common sense and reason, I have embarked fully on the journey to get an agent for my book and I’m learning lots of stuff, yay! Hear are some of the things I have learned so far:
1. Getting a rejection is much better than getting nothing at all. I’ve had three rejections so far and all of them have been very nice. I’m starting to suspect that contrary to popular belief, literary agents are actually human beings. Further research is required.
2. Writing a synopsis for your novel is worse than breaking your nose. Much worse. I am still not done this. (@#%&**^&) I started it in FEBRUARY. I mean I am done, but it sucks. I called in a professional for help, but I feel stuck until he emails me with some kind of strategy. I have nothing positive to say about this, I’ll just be glad to move it off my plate one day, in about fifty years or so.
3. You actually are your own worst enemy, like actually for real. Really. This one is hard to explain, but I seem to slowly be learning through some strange osmosis that I really do chart my own course in life and how I feel about myself and what I do directly impacts what the hell is going on. Now I know I’m a little slow on the uptake some times, so this might be one of those things that everyone else already knows and I’m just figuring out, but it’s pretty crazy. Like if I get a polite rejection or I can’t find a good agent to query, I start to feel sad and a little depressed. I leave my desk and go pull weeds out of the garden or something and think, maybe my book sucks, maybe this is a stupid idea, maybe I’ll never get an agent and I’m a terrible writer and I should get a real job and be a normal person. It’s terrible, this doubt and fear, especially when I don’t really believe any of those things. I’m pretty stubborn and stupid, so I don’t see myself succumbing to these thoughts any time soon, but they scare me and make me sad. How many people don’t do things, how many things don’t I do just because of stupid, baseless thoughts and feelings like that? Need to nix that kind of thing.
4. I suck at Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for a while, but I don’t post much because I never know what to post. I just don’t feel like I’m all that interesting, to be honest. I’m getting into it though with all of this agent researching and I enjoy other people’s Twitters. I’ll just go with a practice makes perfect for that.
I’ve also learned it’s hard to try and get an agent for a book and start writing another one. These seem to be very different wavelengths for me and I have a hard time flipping between them. My next mission will be to start the next one regardless. What good is a writer who isn’t writing?
E.E. Moxam 