The End of Summer

It’s strange, but up here in New England, fall weather actually starts right on or after Labor Day. I haven’t had to pull out a jacket just yet, but all ready the nights are cool and some of the mornings rather chilly. Well, that was summer, I guess. I still feel cheated, though it was as hot as I could hope for it to be – but it was over in just three months, 90 days.

I started my last graduate semester Wednesday with a class entitled “Modern Publishing for Librarians”. It’s taught by a super cool woman who published tons of children’s books, and who used to be the editor of Hornbook. You know how when you really like someone and you act like a doofus in front of them because you’re trying too hard to impress them? That’s how I feel about this class. I want to be published by a big house so badly, and I’m so *in* to children’s literature, that I have to almost bite my tongue and sit on my hands in order to listen to the professor. I got so excited by the class on Wednesday that I could hardly sleep that night afterwards.

The best part of the class is the final assignment: a book pitch. We’re going to learn how to do a real book pitch. I’ve pretty much settled on the idea of pitching Enterstates, my Southern girl road trip novel, even though I’m mostly finished with Ariadne and all my friends seem to like that one better. Ariadne is a bunch of Greek myths retold through the first person narration of the princess Theseus used to kill the Minotaur and then dumped on the island of Naxos. However, I’ve been working on Enterstates off and on for so long now that it’s a lot more polished, and I think that’s the one to lead with. Besides, I’m closer to it somehow, and that’s the point, I think. I really don’t care if I’m never a famous writer. I just want to have my shot, to be a Published Writer. If I only get one shot, I should try to Say Something. I keep trying to put myself in the right place at the right time to make it work, so I think it’ll just have to happen, eventually.

The day after my first last class, my job changed at the Harvard Medical School Library. I sort of had my position upgraded, even though I wasn’t given a title change or more money or more hours or anything like that. Well, it’s been a year since I started, so I’m happy to have anything, and I am learning a lot more in the new position. I can’t wait to start being an archivist full time somewhere, but who knows where I’ll end up? After a year, my job at Harvard is still challenging, but now has some comfort of familiarity.

I’m very big on the comfort of familiarity, having moved around so often. I like making up new habits, new rituals for myself. My new main comfort thing is to wake up very early on Sunday mornings so I can make myself orange sweet rolls and watch “Ebert and Roeper”. Sometimes Aral is up and we enjoy fresh pastry and pop culture criticism with one another. When I was a kid, I used to always wake up on Sunday mornings and watch Siskel and Ebert argue about movies because there were no cartoons on. When my Dad would come off the road and wake up at home, sometimes we would make orange rolls. I gave up Siskel and Ebert as a teenager in favor of sleeping in late, and then one day not too long ago, Gene Siskel died and I remembered how much I really liked seeing two sort of bitchy movie geeks argue. I discovered them on early on Sundays during a bout of insomnia, and the new tradition was established.

With my new position at work, and some new classes, and everything in my life about to change again in January, I need all the comfortable familiar things I can surround myself with. I can feel that I’m on the edge of a lot of big things, and I know it’s about time to make them all happen.