the best bad news I've ever had

I was woken up today by frantic buzzing on the doorbell. When I got down the stairs, semi-clad with my eyes still bleary and my hair like a bomb in a hair factory, the postman was gone and my manuscript was sitting in the hall looking forlorn.

It took two cups of very sugary coffee and a hearty breakfast before I could get the courage up to open it and read my rejection letter. I was fully expecting something like 'this is terrible self-indulgent twentysomething dross, all the characters are hateful and pitiable, and you should do us all a favour and never pick up a pen again'.

But no. Agent Guy liked the characters and the ideas. He said some very nice things about style and imagination. The main problem, he says, is that there's too much crammed into it, too many plotlines going on at once, and it doesn't all fit together. I knew this deep down anyway, if I'm honest. And then he wrote, "It's like Michelangelo's David... if you dropped him off the Empire State Building." Okay, I winced, but I laughed too. I never thought I'd laugh out loud at a rejection letter.

He says to send him another one with a simpler plot. (Hmm. Writing frenzy over Christmas?)

I'd have expected to be depressed at a time like this - to think my whole summer had been wasted writing this messy farrago of a book which should be four different books by rights. But I'm not. I'm actually quite pleased.

See? The Fear is totally random.


Maybe I'm just still blissed out by having a go on tjej's new cello at her and miss_newham's luau party last night. I love cellos. Songs with cellos in make me weak at the knees. (I should really make a mix CD of the Best Cello Songs Ever - "Unfinished Sympathy", Ballboy's "Something's Going To Happen Soon", something by Invocal, everything the Magnetic Fields have ever done live...) But I'd never touched one or tried to play one till last night, and I got a huge kick out of just drawing the bow across the strings and making this fabulous rich warm thrumming sound... mmmmm.

Even though all I could play was "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (the easiest song in the world on a stringed instrument) and that was probably out of tune, I still want a cello for my very own now. Don't know where I'd put it, though.

Generally a wonderful night, full of showtunes and Danish pudding and tinsel and wine. I wore my new, utterly ludicrous silver Buffalo shoes, at which tjej declared "You rule space!"

I may not have an agent, but I RULE SPACE. Cool.