Susan Senator

I like a Saturday like this. Everyone is suitably engaged: Nat (and Ned) are at a birthday party; Max and Ben are gaming together; Max is occasionally discussing his Anime Convention costume with me; I am getting stuff done while reading Ann Packer’s Songs Without Words. It is a story that is centered around a suicide and then a suicide attempt. It is about women’s friendships and the relationships between mothers and their teenage kids. There is a little husband-wife stuff, but not enough. Otherwise I love it. (she typed, getting up for a paper towel to wipe the 25-calorie hot cocoa she spilled on it.) I love reading about things I’ve wondered about but have no intention of trying: what it’s like to be so sad you kill yourself; what drives a couple to finally say, “okay, that’s it, we’re over.”

Speaking of the former — I mean sadness, not suicide — yesterday was a baffling whopper. It hit me out of the blue, or should I say, out of the gray; a bastard of a mood that was shat out of dingy white hole in the sky. I could not blame it on my cycle, lack of sleep, stress, or anything tangible except stupid weather and stupid me.

I get so down about my career choice sometimes. Being a writer makes you so dependent on others, including yourself You have to be able to organize and spew ideas that appeal, that will ignite minds and sell. You have to keep hammering away at agents and editors and friends for contacts. You have to keep believing you have something worthwhile to say. That you’re not over.

Yesterday I was lucky in that my pain led me to a bright spot: a revision of an old idea. I got out my old proposal and started to change it over to the new idea. Still a book about fulfillment in the midst of adversity, but with a few new twists. Even a new title. So I’m happy about that, and yesterday, was dancing on air.

And so… I danced. Not on air, but on a creaky hardwood floor. I did not even need the mirror this time. I just lost myself in the song — Misirlou, of course — and the flash of pink I was making across the room.