Spider Prophet

The publishing industry is like an ex-boyfriend.

He’s treated me badly, beaten me up, left me without a notice and more or less in the worst shape of my life. But somehow, I can never really leave him behind. After days left waking up with nowhere to go, all of sudden he’s on the phone promising me things, and I can’t deafen my ears to his silver tongue. The promises of late nights, skipping lunch to go to a last minute “meeting” and being showered with free gifts makes a fool of me every time. After an hour of teasing (and maybe a bit of oral foreplay), I end up in the same place I was before. Nervous, waiting for a phone that never arrives, until finally, went my withdrawal is almost through, I get a letter from you saying that you’ve left all over again.

Though this description may be a little bit of too much verbal masturbation, it is the best way I have of describing the experience of trying to enter the publishing world. Despite all the mistreatment, I can still feel my blood race when I get that literary world gets close to me. Perhaps enough is never enough?

It seems like I’ve been on a whirlwind of interviews. It makes it hard for me to keep track of where I’ve been, what jobs I was actually interested in, or where else there is to go from here. Mostly because, I’m not even sure where it is that I am now. I feel like a kid trying to find the pinata. After all the spinning around, I’ve been dropped back on the ground and may very well  be walking in the opposite direction of all the goods. However, there aren’t many, if any, guideposts to show me otherwise. (The lack of guideposts is something that shall be discussed in a different entry.)

And yet, at this moment, I still hold out faith in it. In him.

- Spider