The last happy day you'll ever have

Last night there was big news at my writing group. The leader of the group, who has been writing both fantasy and romance for years, signed with an agent from the large and well-regarded Writers House. It's a huge event, a watershed. I brought her flowers. She was excited and still a little in shock. The contract had just gone into the mail that day.

Later I was telling a (very seasoned) writing friend about the event. I said I'd brought Nancy flowers and my friend replied "Well you should have because...."

And then we said in unison "Because this is the last happy day she'll ever have."

We're actually not as cynical or as ungrateful as that statement would imply. But there is something poignant about that moment in which a dream starts to become reality. Part of it is the very obvious truth that reality never matches the fantasy....Whenever you anticipate an event such as going off to college, your first trip to Europe, getting married, having a baby you can't help but build up this whole dream around the event. Then when it happens it's good....it's just not good in the way you thought it would be good. You're home from the hospital but so sore you can't stand, sit, lie, or walk. Your dorm room is approximately 22 square feet. You new husband gets drunk and throws up the first night of your honeymoon. The cabdriver who picks you up at the Madrid airport looks nothing at all like Antonio Bandares. The fantasy has to make way for the more compromised and complex reality and that happens in publishing too. Getting an agent and a publisher aren't the end of the game, they're the beginning - the first flick of a domino that sets off a series of choices and you'll never know (never!) when you've made the right one.

And then there's the more interior issue as well....getting your dream in a way means losing your dream. You simply don't have a dream anymore. Something has to rush in and fill that space where are the anticipation and yearning lived for years but - at least in my case and probably in lots of people's cases - the new thing doesn't arrive all at once. So, in the meantime, getting what you want feels oddly hollow.

I didn't say all this to the woman in my writing group. I handed her the flowers and said "Congratulations."

Which, in the land of writers, translates to "good luck."