Spectacular Settings! (#WEP)

Hosted by wonder-women Denise Covey and Yolanda Renee, the WEP (Write - Edit - Publish) Spectacular Settings hop is all about the power of place -- and the part it plays (can/should play) in writing.

Got a spectacular setting from a favorite book? Join the hop (it runs from the 19th to the 26th) and share! (More info here.)

The setting I'm sharing here is not from fiction but from poetry. And not just any poet, either. If you've followed this blog for a while, you might know I'm a huge fan of T.S. Eliot. A couple of months ago a long-time friend -- one of those people from the past that sometimes pop up into the present, usually bearing extraordinary gifts -- got together a small group of poetry enthusiasts for a reading circle on Skype (we're scattered all over, geographically), and the first piece we read was Eliot's Four Quartets. 

It's a piece I know well, maybe more than well -- it was none other than this old friend who introduced me to Eliot some 20 years ago, and the Eliot collection I own is one he gave to me back then... twenty years almost to the day we began reading. Several bits from Four Quartets have, in these two decades, gained special significance. For instance,

It's up. It's out. It's done.

 August 9th, 2015. Quiet Sunday, no plans other than lazying around the house, maybe do a bit of yard work later in the afternoon, when the heat goes down. My dushi in the kitchen, preparing me an avocado-and-tomato sandwich for lunch. Facebook spewing its inane entertainment. The dogs asleep around my desk chair, immobilizing me.

The ping of an email. I don't know it yet, but my comfortably ordinary Sunday is about to end.

The email is from my publisher. It's up, says the subject line.

No need to say what. Or where.

The book. My book. It's published. THE MIRACLE OF SMALL THINGS. Out into the world, into the hands of whoever wants to have it, including perfect strangers. Including, most conspicuously, the people who've cheered me on. The people in my life.

Yikes.

It seems so stupid, after 9 months of prepping -- working -- for this, 9 months of knowing it was going to happen... But it still blindsided me.

It's up. It's out. For better or for worse, it's done.

My first book has been published.

What's taking so freakin' long??? (Part I)

Writing--no, scratch that; publishing is not for the impatient. And I am the mother of impatience. Which is why I'm kind of amazed that I haven't thrown a hissy fit yet. (Yet, I emphasize.)

No, actually I know exactly why I haven't. It's because I'm so damn busy. I don't have time to be impatient. As a matter of fact, days are going by like sand through toes at the surfline. Like, for instance, it's Tuesday already and--what do you mean Thursday? I NEED MY WEDNESDAY BACK!

I mean, how hard can it be? THE MIRACLE OF SMALL THINGS had already been published in Pure Slush's 2014 A Year In Stories. Well, sort of. Last year, when Truth Serum Press (sister press of Pure Slush) agreed to publish it as a standalone book, we felt there was a piece missing from the original 12 stories, so--okay, I wrote a 13th story. Which turned out a tad longer than expected. And took longer, too, to finish. (I sweated blood on that one.)

But aside from that, I thought it was a matter of some small (fine, smallish) revisions. You know, quirky wording that somehow escaped both my and the editor's eagle eyes the first few times. And then there were the places where, due to the word count limit for the originals, I cut character arcs short or held back on information that actually did move the story forward. So these things had to be remedied for the standalone version. And then revised. And re-revised. And re-re-re...