The Lonely Moments

After many years of not cooking, I have discovered God's gift to cooking-challenged and exhausted mothers everywhere: The Slow Cooker. I bow down before its glory.

In addition, I have expanded my repertoire by learning to make a few carefully selected and well-loved recipes like cold soba noodles with red bell peppers and broccolli, and I bought rice paper to try something new today. But, more often than not, my kids looks askance at me . . . and we eat pizza.

Yesterday, I went with my two daughters to see Julie and Julia.

I loved it. Yes, it was about foodies and cooking. Because I have Crohn's disease, I am not a foodie. I enjoy a good meal, but frankly, I more often than not can't eat what's served . . . so . . . I'm happy with the dinner rolls and maybe a bit of potato. But I like the social part of meals, conversations amongst friends, and I really did love the movie--it showed that shared aspect of a meal.

But unbeknownst to me, each part of the movie was also about a writer. Julie, the blogger, wanted to get a book deal. And Julia, the chef, wanted to publish a 700+-page cookbook in an era when women were making things with marshmallow Fluff (a humorous one-off line in the movie).

And the scenes in which Julia either received a rejection letter, or was told she would have to start from scratch and rewrite ALL 700+ pages (on a typewriter with onion skin paper) were so magnificent and heartbreaking. This woman labored for YEARS to have her book published. Years and years. Obviously, it's no spoiler to say eventually she succeeded and the conveyance of her extreme nervousness when she got the letter in the mail and then her joy . . . it's about a full minute on screen of what every writer goes through.

When my agent calls and leaves a message, "I need to talk with you"--it's either an offer or a rejection. I had forgotten the sort of mental games I play internally as I dial and wait to hear what he has to say. Then the rollercoaster of ups and downs bringing anything to fruition despite really long odds.

So much of this blog is about process. But there's this other forgotten piece sometimes. We can console on rejections and cheer on each other's successes, but there is always that moment (in Julia's case, in the movie, she opens a letter from a publisher alone on a porch, careful not to go inside in case it's bad news, and wanting to be alone when she received the bad news) that you and you alone have to steel yourself for and then overcome. If you don't, if you quit . . . the world will be without your souffle.

I had forgotten, until I saw it on screen . . . the most solitary moments for me aren't the writing. It's the "news"--good or bad. The waiting. The mental machinations to ready myself for any outcome. THOSE are the lonely moments.

Thoughts? What are your lonely writer moments?