TopBlogContent

Along with my resolution to stay upbeat and optimistic no matter what, this year I’m going green. I’m going to achieve my writing goals (and along with them, my financial ones) and I’m going to be environmentally responsible while doing so by reusing and recycling whenever possible.

Most resolutions fail because they’re spur of the moment ideas born solely out of optimism, with little planning behind them. But I’ve done the groundwork and mapped out some practical applications of my resolutions to keep me on track all year. Here’s my plan for 2008, step by step:

1. Finish editing the novel and start submitting it. I can’t get famous by keeping it in a drawer, can I?

2. Recycle all my old bank statements and tax returns from the last 15 years. I’m going to need that filing cabinet space to store royalty statements and big thick tax returns once I get a cushy contract with a major publishing house.

3. Recycle unsent letters. There’s an exercise encouraged in marriage counseling where one writes a letter to her uncooperative spouse and says everything she wants to say, however she wants to say it. The spouse doesn’t get to the see the letter, it’s just to vent. I have an entire boot box full of them, all beginning with phrases such as ‘Dear !#%&@’ and ‘Dear Mr. Sensitivity’, that I reread occasionally after I’ve had a few glasses of wine. I could mail them now, and perhaps he’d even laugh. But imagine the postage fees! No point going into debt right at the beginning of the year. Besides, I need the postage to keep mailing out my manuscript–because, mysteriously, it keeps coming back. The publishers I’ve sent it to thus far must have a full list for quite a while.

4. Go on a diet and get some exercise. I want to get in better shape before I start lunching with the other literary greats. I’d like to lose at least 20 more pounds than necessary so I can fully indulge in New York cuisine once I’m flown out to negotiate a contract. But I doubt there’ll be time. Oh, and the talk shows! The camera adds at least 10 pounds; I don’t want to look too fat on Letterman.

5. Recycle the small pile of rejection slips. They all say almost the same thing, word for word, just on different letterhead. Not worth the space to keep them.

6. Dig out the few most entertaining unsent spouse letters for safekeeping. I kept meaning to take that box to the recycling center, but luckily I put it off. Those witty gems might be worth something someday when I’m a famous novelist. Maybe I’ll even send one to the ex after I’m a household name, just as a sign of goodwill. He could sell it on eBay.

7. Recycle more rejection slips, except the one with a handwritten note that I can’t read because it’s blurred by a coffee stain. It looks like ‘monklurp fxp tipto n’ when I squint. But it’s still special: an editor actually took the time to scribble something illegible on the rejection slip! That means I’m getting warmer…

8. Instead of wasting yet more paper, start calling publishing houses to see if they’re even looking at manuscripts, or if their lines are full for a while. There’s no point in wasting time sending my book to places that don’t currently need new books! If they’re accepting manuscripts, I will then explain that they must have mistakenly put mine back in the envelope without reading it.

Photograph © (c) Inkswamp. Some rights reserved.

9. Write some letters to publishing houses. Letters I would never, ever send unless I planned a major shift in career path. Letters questioning the sanity and good taste of several key people. Write my first ever letter using only expletives and exclamation points.

10. Recycle those letters. Responsible, see?

11. Recycle more rejection slips. What is wrong with these people, don’t they know they’re wasting precious natural resources? I printed that manuscript to be read and appreciated, not just shuffled from envelope to envelope!

12. Drunk dial Simon & Schuster. Explain to the woman on the phone that in the spirit of recycling, they didn’t need to send my manuscript back to me. She could have kept it and put it somewhere else instead.

13. Send letter of apology to receptionist at Simon & Schuster. Include a note asking her to recycle it when she’s finished.

14. Send my novel to all my friends electronically and on CD-ROM, since clearly no publisher wants to take a chance on something so original. Yes, of course I’m happy about it; it all worked out just as I had planned! I never really wanted it published on paper anyway. Think of all those trees…

Shelley Ontis lives in Illinois, surrounded by corn, cows and pick-up trucks. She claims it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Hot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.