The Infinite Expectation of the Dawn

      I published my sixth novel last week and it was received with sensationally minimal fanfare and applaud. I don't mean to negate the enthusiastic response I did receive from the kinder members of my family and friends, but for those of you who spend many waking hours on your literary creations, I'm sure you know what I mean. The elation one feels at typing the last word, correcting the last error, rewriting the last awkward paragraph, and then making the grand announcement to everyone you know and love, can quickly fade away in the virtual silence that follows this triumph.
     Okay, the truth is that I'm the world's worst marketer, so possibly this has something to do with the continuing turn of events regarding my so-called writing career. I'm not on Facebook for starters, a fact which my children continually remind me of by trying to chat with me concerning major family events and then adding, oh yeah, you don't know about that because you're not on Facebook! I used to claim it was because I was a teacher, but the truth is, like everything else technical, I'm simply afraid of trying to make it work.
      It's also true that every time I go in a Bookstore and try to talk them into stocking my novels, I panic and run out the door as soon as they say no...or even, hmmm...I'm not sure if we can do that. My other response is to try and console them when they explain how hard it might be to carry my books. Suddenly I'm on their side and I don't understand why. Weren't these the same people who just a few minutes ago basically told me that a 60-something Indie writer is not worth their time or energy?
     My personal favorite in response to my efforts are the old friends from my youth who tell me they never read fiction. Do they not recall the smutty novels we all passed around as teenagers? And what self-respecting, late 60s St. Lawrence University student never read the Electric Kool Aid Acid test?
     And if you're a struggling writer like me, I'm sure you've also had a friend call and ask to drop by, then just happens to bring along an "edited" copy of one of your published novels to "help you out." Help you out with what? Expanding your already shattered ego?
      Or the published mystery writer, whose books (even though you don't like mysteries) you bought and reviewed, hoping for some of the same in return, only to have said writer tell you they would, but they didn't want to pay for them. I've personally also read and reviewed glowingly five poetry books by old friends I haven't seen since the Bush era (the first Bush), but I'm pretty sure they don't have an Erni Johnson first edition of their very own.
      Okay, this is the post-publication downer we all experience...at least the "all we" writers that I know and talk to (let's just say that neither John Grisham nor Anne Tyler have invited me to tea recently). It can be a bummer, right? But certainly not the end of the world, especially when one's world is, as mine is, pretty damn nice otherwise.
     When I taught American Literature, I used to drag a fair amount of unsuspecting high school juniors through parts of Thoreau's Walden (I knew better than to assign the whole thing!) You know Thoreau, right? He's the guy who led the protest against paying government tax and then built a "rustic" cabin on his friend Emerson's property (for which Thoreau paid no taxes), and then walked home several nights a week to eat dinner with his mother (who also did his wash, by the way).  But I have to admit, he was incredibly quotable. Okay, not the "simplicity, simplicity" stuff, but when he pointed out that true happiness lay in an "infinite expectation of the dawn."
      I must confess, I am a sucker for that concept. But fortunately, equally so, for what Kurt Vonnegut noted in Slaughterhouse Five, when he wrote "and so it goes."  Yup, it sure does.