Well.I have finally gotten back to the first draft of my latest new story [insert your favorite celebratory noise here!]* and already it's shaping up to be a puzzle of a puzzlement. Seems I have written the same story in two alternate universes: one a tragic and solemn literary world full of insight and pathos and the hope of a Newbery. A totally serious work. But it's not very funny.
Which means I'm gonna mope through the writing. Alas.
Universe Redux on the other hand is a slap-happy place full of lawyers, guns and money. It's great fun but unless some editor somewhere understands an ambitious mid-grade write who means to tell about truth and beauty within the contextual framework of weird, funny stuff, then I'll have a transcendent time writing only to face the alas that is going to be waiting for me the second I start submitting:
Dear Ms. Zinnen:
While your story I-went-for-the-fun-universe-because-what-writer-wants-to-drag-her-whiny-moany-self-through-solemn-and-bathetic-literary-HELL? has much merit, I am afraid, alas(!!!!!), that the realities of the postmodern** children's market and so forth and so on.
Still, the notion that I'd even consider writin' serious is a tremendous sign of how much I've grown as a writer.*** I'm totally impressed!
But I'm also going funny.
_______________________
*Mine is the cozy mix between a snort of disbelief and a yodel of happiness made by my youngest daughter.
**postmodern = after zombies
***Maybe it's also a sign of sheer desperation since I haven't sold anything for nearly a decade. But I digress.
