A friend once described my breakdown as high functioning. I still went to work; saw my friends, though not as often, I admit. I dated someone, although in dating him, I succeeded in making everything worse. Perhaps, most importantly, I wrote; a 200,000 word monster. Those words have never left me. Those characters have never left me.

.

It started simply enough. It was the summer of 2005, I had graduated from college three months before, had not yet started the job which would eventually drag me down. Hamlet was performing on the Boston Common, and I went to see it, not once or twice, but four times. I began to see things in the underlying edges of the characters, in the subtextual movements on stage. It was a short story first, two actors having not seen one another several years, happened to be in the same town for this performance.

.

It grew from there. I expanded the characters. I gave them bits of my history and neuroses; they stopped being just friends at some point, being instead lovers, then in love with one another. I gave them my breakdown. While I was having my breakdown, I was writing these characters at three in the morning. Drinking my continuous spin of tea, I wrote these characters until they lived under my skin, and I could not differentiate where my breakdown ended, and theirs started. When I finally broke it off with the bad-for-me-boyfriend, I broke them up too. I wrote those 200,000 words in just a little over a year. I closed my eyes, and those characters still danced before me. It was perhaps the closest I came to an absolute brink. I forgot briefly how to live.

.

When I finally started to pull myself out, when I finally left that job and started graduate school, I would not write that story. I still have it saved on my hard drive, but for almost two years, I would not allow myself to read it. Because if I did, I would go back. I would fall into again that desperateness of emotion, that absolute emptiness I thought I'd never escape.

.

It was the end of the 2008 fall semester, nearly a year since I had started to fight, when I wrote my first poem reflecting on that period, when I finally realized the fissures had started to reforge, never entirely whole again, but still practically invisible. Except to those who knew. Except for those who watched me fall, and crawl my way back again.

.

Except for those I have since told.

.

Perhaps it is right that I'm finally working on that monster again.

.

Sauntering [Downward]

.

When you murmur between sheets,

and stars, I can hear you.

Your rise and fall of voice and tone,

quiet words,

.

soft touches, and kisses.

You admit more in the darkness,

and under cotton –

.

(Egyptian high count,

I only would have you

buy the best) –

.

but still. I wish you wouldn't

whisper what secrets you keep

just under skin.

.

Because when you do, I cannot escape,

and every time you fall,

I do too.

.

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Stefanie Maclin, Guest Blogger

.

Stefanie Maclin's poetry and short fiction has appeared in several publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Under the Radar, The Maynard, Doorknobs&Bodypaint, Astropoetica, Star*Line, The Linnett's Wings, Underground Voices, Battered Suitcase, and Poetica Publishing's Mizmor L'David Anthology: The Shoah. She has guest blogged previously for Poetica Magazine. She has work forthcoming in Illumen, Ashe Journal, and Skive Magazine. She has recently completed her Master's degree in Library Science/Archives Management and is working on what she hopes will be her first full-length chapbook, a work she is tentatively titling Descent. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

“Dear sir or madam, would you read my book?

It took me years to write, won’t you take a look?”

.   - John Lennon, “Paperback Writer”

.

I have a serious case of writer’s block. Not the ordinary kind — I’m not struggling to find the perfect couplet to finish off a 14-line sonnet, nor am I wrestling with a plot-line that seems to have struck a dead-end. I’m not chalking up sleepless nights staring into the black abyss of an impending deadline. My block is not about any of these things.

.

You see, I recently completed a novel, and now it is time to trot it out before the admiring world. Only ... to do that, I need an agent. And to get an agent, I need to compose (shudder) a query letter.

.

This is where I’m stuck. That query letter is crucial, it overshadows the effort of writing the novel itself. If the agent can’t get through my query letter, she isn’t going to read my synopsis, let alone the first few chapters of my book. And she’ll never ask to see the entire manuscript.

.

“This should be easy,” I tell myself. “You have a strong product — it’s controversial and current, it has convincing characters and a compelling plot. All you need to do is sell it.”

.

This is what I tell myself. But it’s not working.

.

Each evening I come home and sit before the keyboard, resolved that this will be the night. I’ll knock that query letter out and have it ready to send off to the scores of agents I’ve already researched. Oh, but first, let me check my e-mail. And Facebook. Oops, now it’s dinner time. And wait, here’s an article in the paper I really must read because it’s all about electronic books being the wave of the future. Look at the time! On second thought, too late to look, the time has flown. All right, this weekend, then — this weekend I’ll buckle my socks and get down to the business of writing that query letter.

.

But before the weekend even arrives, it’s booked. There’ll be a show or a concert I absolutely must see, friends who want to go out to dinner, a jam session across the park, and how can I turn any of this down? I call it “gathering material”, because you never know how any of these experiences might turn up in your work, sooner or later. Your work that will never be published, because you will never find an agent for your book, because you never sat down and wrote that query letter.

.

The Greeks had nine muses — but the muse I need is the muse of queries. And she refuses to sing. That’s the problem. I expect too much of her. A query letter is a business proposition, not an opera. A query should be straightforward and succinct. Perhaps John Lennon said it best — “Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?” Actually, he sang it, didn’t he?

.

I’m beginning to think I’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. The challenge is not writing a query that will stand out -- it’s sending out a query often enough, to enough agents, that it will beat the odds. Any novel worth reading has likely been rejected hundreds of times. No matter how fine the book, no matter how compelling the query letter.

.

In the end, persistence is what counts. Believe in your project so strongly that you can bear to see it fail, again and again. Each failure brings you one step closer to the goal.

.

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Luther Jett, Guest Blogger

.

W. Luther Jett is currently working to complete a query letter for his novel, And This I Know Is True. He has seen numerous poems published in various print and on-line journals. Some of his work can be seen at http://www.lutherjett.com . His blog is at http://lutherjett.livejournal.com/  – Linda Pressman, Blog Editor