THE TWENTY-NINTH PAGE

During the writing period, I had taken on only enough reading work to pay the monthly bills. I did not want to be under the influence of other writing. My private, personal reading was of a healing nature as I tried to escape my own wretched prose work.

I returned vigorously to my professional reading as the manuscript lay in the refrigerator as chillingly stolid as Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, last seen frozen in the polar wastes.

I could not face the next step: sending my manuscript into the world. Often an agent is used for this process, but I chose not to do so.

There are many reasons writers employ agents, chief among them in the fielding of manuscript rejection. Let the agent open the returned package containing the bruised body and the condolence note as pale as a lily. Let him put the first spin on the rationalization of rejection: the editor’s marriage misplaced in the arms of his secretary, the faulty decision induced by drugs, the cancellation of the fiction program, the forthcoming corporate takeover by a sewage concern, and the classic “not appropriate for our list as it is presently constituted.” It’s all in an agent’s bag of tricks for protecting and preserving the delicate soul of the author.

Meanwhile, my own manuscript shyly slumbered in the icy wastes of the refrigerator.