In the fall of 1989 when I first started teaching composition at Volunteer State Community College, Betty Nelson, one of the professors in my new department, had taped several cartoons and quotes to the door of her office. This was back when we were allowed to tape interesting tidbits to the door of our office.
One the cartoons I’ve always remembered showed a middle-aged man lying in a tattered recliner with a defeated look on his face. His wife, clearly frustrated with him, was standing in front of the recliner holding a letter that had just come for him in the mail. The caption to the cartoon was her saying, “Look, if you can’t handle the rejection, stop sending out that god-awful poem.”
The second piece from Betty’s door that caught my attention was a quote from Moliere, the French playwright: “Writing is a bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. And, finally, you do it for money.”
I’ve remembered these two statements about writing for so many years because they capture my feelings about the process so well. I love writing, and I have written for much of my life–essays, fiction, the occasional poem and even the less occasional song.
But I’ve never seriously tried to publish. Partly, that’s because I don’t think I could handle the rejection. Also, I’ve always been put off by what I imagine to be the sheer amount of shameless self-promotion needed to be successful financially as a writer. I’ve always known that I’d make a crappy salesman. If I sold cars for Chevy, for instance, I’d probably pull potential customers aside and tell them in a whisper how great the Hondas were next door.
But also, doing anything for money turns that thing into a job. God bless the people who can deal with that–but it’s not for me. I want to write what I want to write because it interests or amuses me, and I hope that it will interest or amuse some of my friends as well. That’s enough. A few friends.
With that in mind, I am hereby announcing (shameless self-promotion) that I’m publishing a novel that I wrote a few years ago. My plan is to publish one chapter every Friday for the next 23 weeks on a platform called Substack.
Don’t worry. It’s free.
The novel, which I originally wrote from 2014 – 2018, is titled The Inner Workings of a Universe: A Love Story for the Aged. The story is about a retired farmer and his wife, Mike and Marilyn, who are trying to figure out what to do with the land they still own but no longer farm. Different characters, including their kids and neighboring farmers, all have different ideas. Mike resists them all.
The story is also about how hard it can be to give up those things we cling to long after we have any right to continue clinging. It’s also about what happens when your three-year old Ford F150 starts talking to you.
I am publishing this story on Substack rather than on our website, Lowerpondfarm, for a couple of reasons: first Substack has a cleaner appearance and will be easier to read; second, it’s a different kind of writing than I generally do on Lowerpondfarm, and I don’t want to clutter up people’s emails with postings they are not interested in.
Again, my plan is to publish one chapter a week, on Fridays. I’m only starting today (Monday) because it’s my birthday and it’s snowing, and the first two chapters are short.
The link below will take you to Chapter One: Comfort Zone. If you want to subscribe, you can click the box in the upper-right corner and put in your email address. Then, you should get an email every week when I post the next chapter (there are 23 of them). You can read the story on a desktop computer, a tablet, or (if you have the eyes for it) your phone.
https://micknleb.substack.com/p/the-inner-workings-of-a-universe?sd=pf
Did I mention, it’s free?
Thanks,
Mick
