Spider

This morning I woke, sat at the computer, smoked the obligatory cigarette with the first coffee of the day. I didn’t really look at the screen, rather I looked at the lonesome spider that sat in ever anticipation of a meal, in the corner. It, as all arachnids, looked back neither scared nor really interested in me – the giant with a mouth that breathed smoke but no fire. Why should a small creature like him be really bothered, after all, a giant that breathed smoke would do him no harm. Was it cruel of me to share some of the exhaling greyness with him? I didn’t think so and, as far as I can tell, neither did he. A wobble of the web he so precariously sat upon, a dither of a leg and a realisation that that wobble wasn’t he next meal. But still he sat and locked in a combative stare, I was the one to look away.

That is how I look at trying to get my work published. I am the spider that sits waiting for the wobble, and the letter is the meal I so yearn for. Do I starve waiting – does the spider? The really basic answer to that is, of course, no.

I have a wife, a wonderful wife I may add, who really does believe in me. My talent is something she wishes she could do. She asks on many occasion exactly how does a writer, write? Well, if I had to answer that in the only real way I can – we look at spiders. Is that illogical to those who read? I cannot answer that, but looking at spiders seems to click something inside that dark reaches of our minds. I looked at that spider and then began to tell a tale, a tale of a spider who waits, a web that really is a world rather than a tenuous home that traps its prey. Can that world exist? Well it certainly can in the mind of a writer – anywhere can exist in his/her mind. But that makes us no different than everyone else, surely! So the nominal extension to the mind, is putting it all down on paper – or as we have today a beautifully laid out word doc. It doesn’t matter if we use open source or Billy’s pre-paid paraphernalia. The essence is that we use this medium to get our thoughts down and in some semblance of organisation so another can read it. Yet, looking at the spider and writing until the early hours of the morning – mumbling to ourselves that that word just doesn’t say the right thing, is just the start of it. Proofed, proofed again – critiqued and proofed once more. This still doesn’t get those words into print. But we have to persevere and keep waiting for that wobble with the hope that it will come. Will it? That is in the hands of higher beings and possibly God Himself.

Would God write a novel knowing what has to be done to get a sniff at a publishing deal? I don’t think He would – creating a world and those creatures that live on that physical world would be easier, unless God decided to play a sport, star in a movie about Himself, decided to be brutal and become a celebrity and drink a few drinks and get arrested. If God was to do that agents would be pouring over themselves the wine of 15% commission and hello profit, world rights and can we make a movie out of that!?

New writers are wanted they say – but new writers who have been published before. Publishing seems to have gone the way of many industries – ones where the benign and beige is the in thing. Tell the same story as your peers and we know that will sell – try not to be too different, if you do that then they may have to work at what they do.

So, as my friend the spider waits for the errant fly, I will wait for the agent that comes along to wobble the fibre I sit on. I know that they will do their best for me, as I will them, but I promise not to make a meal from their inner most entrails. At least not until I have the cheque and it has cleared.