Someone Will Find You

Once in a while, the Universe sends you a message. I've been thinking about my career, about what's next for me, and about the different partial manuscripts my agent is/will be circulating on my behalf.

And I've been in this business long enough to know that my portion of that work is done, at least temporarily. Now the waiting begins.

You see, you can dream up new ideas, you can write a synopsis and sample chapters, you can sign the best agent in the whole wide world...but there's a point where the process is out of your hands. A place where you have to launch your work into the stratosphere, and then you stand back and cross your fingers. Actually, it reminds me a lot of my son's first day of school. I felt that I'd done everything I could as a parent to prepare him, but on that day, I had to step away and let him start his own journey.

So it is with our work. We can propose, we can edit and rework, but eventually we must sit back and hope that our writing strikes a chord in an editor's heart. (More to the point these days: It strikes a chord in an editor's heart and it satisfies the publisher's needs for a new product. That's only fair, because after all, publishing is a business; businesses respond to the marketplace.)

So today as I took a bit of a break from writing--except I really never take a break, I'm always thinking about what I have written or what I will write--I was able to get some reading done. I found this in an interview with Buck Henry, actor and writer, who worked on the screenplays for "The Graduate" and "Catch 22," as well as appearing on Saturday Night Live:

"Timing is everything...You really can't control that as a writer, But if you're talented, it'll all work out in the end. I mean, not all the talented writers will make it, of course...But, for the most part, if you're talented, I think somebody will find you."

(From And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft by Mike Sacks)