THE THIRTY-FIRST PAGE

Submitting a manuscript is expensive, but mine traveled at a bargain rate because I hand-delivered it while picking up other manuscripts from my clients.

In a few weeks, I had exhausted my list of clients, my so-called friends. Mild paranoia developed, but there’s value in every psychological disorder. Perhaps it was I who was being rejected, rather than my book. The publishers knew me too well and didn’t want to deal with someone like me. Maybe they thought I would be second-guessing them at every step of the publishing process. They would probably be correct. I moved on toward the unknown.

After a particularly painful stretch of rejection from well-known publishers, who wouldn’t even bother to read an “unsolicited” manuscript, I contemplated getting an agent. The agents I approached would not take me on because I had not been published. Chickens. Eggs. They’ve got to come from somewhere.

The manuscript copy was becoming a rich collection of rips, wrinkles, food stains, and human secretions, which are marks of a manuscript well-loved, but not enough.

My submissions moved outside my delivery area. Now added to postage expenses were new reproduction costs as I made fresh copies from the precious typed mother copy in the fridge. I began to think I could not afford publication.