Waiting For My Car

“Win or lose, star or not, you wait for your car with everyone else, and waiting for your car is a drag.”

                                                       ~ Teri Garr

I hate waiting.  

I hate it with a Lovecraftian-level loathing.  It makes me itch for an elder god to summon so that it can smite all waiting from existence, no matter what price I must pay.  I’d go laughing into The Mountains of Madness if waiting went before me.

I want my career to start yesterday.  I’m getting older and my tolerance for the litanies of patience has long-since been worn away.  I’ve been writing for three whole years now, so why is it taking so long to go anywhere?

In a bid to hail a ride and get my career moving, I enter my work into contests.  A lot of the bigger publishers hold contests annually or semi-annually, and they are the perfect vehicle to expose your work to fresh sets of eyes.  A lot of authors have turned the moment of their ‘W’ (and the attendant accolades) into a full-blown career spent chasing The Muse.  That is all I wish for the rest of my own existence, so I threw out my hand with all my might and tried to hail a cab.

I wasn’t picked.

The rides came alright, but I wasn’t their fare.  Doors opened, doors closed, and I was left standing with the other hopefuls to find a way to hitch a ride to bigger and better things.  Those times of waiting are the hardest to endure.  When all the dreams and possibilities you’d given so much to try and obtain leave with someone else.  Even though you know they’ve paid their dues, a part of you still feels cheated.  

There will be other contests, a fresh fleet of cabs looking for new fares to take with them to greener pastures. In a few days, I’ll have brushed off the grime and be standing at the curb once more with the others.  I’ll have my hand out, doing everything in my power to flag down that yellow-checkered ticket to paradise.  I won’t quit, but I’d be lying if I said it was anything other than a drag.

Cabfully,

The Unsheathed Quill