Help…I have locked myself in the bathroom with a loaded pistol and I don’t know how much time I have left before I pull the trigger. I know this is where I have to be now. It’s a desperate move, but I am desperate. I saw the mosquito fly in here, and if I don’t get it, it will get me…sometime in the early dawn…just when I’ve entered REM sleep mode. So I’ll wait. Sooner or later I’ll hear the little sucker hum, and that’s when I blast away. But what to do in the meantime? I have my wireless, so I guess I’ll write my column now. No notes but I have all my e-mail. Good time to write that column I’ve been thinking about for a long time, using some of the many interesting questions I get from around the world. Maybe I’ll make it into a format to use now and again. Maybe you’d like to ask me something for a future column. So, ask me something. Anything at all. About writing, not about writing, something personal, something general. Just send your questions to mn333mn@earthlink.net . I won’t use your name. You guys are so fascinating. You should see the questions…well, you will, you will. I’ll try to use ones that are relative to a lot of readers, but also a zinger or two. Here are four…
Q. [Victoria, Australia] How do you handle rejection?
A. Mine it. It’s like panning for gold. You examine the slosh for any bright nuggets that might enhance your fortunes. Most of the time it will be just generic sand and gravel – editor comments that simply indicate your material isn’t really a fit for their narrow window of the moment. It doesn’t mean that YOU and your children have been rejected. Funny marks you put on paper have been rejected. I’ve never heard of anyone who was told, Hey, give it up. You are worthless, and so is your crapola writing! But now and then there may be a glint of possibility in the sand and gravel you dredge up from a market to which you have submitted – mention of a specific element that you could change to fit their needs, or a critical reason they believe you should consider, or simply enthusiasm for your work in the hope that you will write something that is a fit for them. On the latter score, one of my earliest rejections called my work, perfect, flawless, brilliant . . . and went on to say, in essence, we don’t want it. Business is always subjective and rarely if ever is there such a thing as objective excellence in publishing. So you mine the rejections for future possibilities. If you’re going to take it personally, I suggest you separate anger and frustration from proactive marketing. Have the envelope (or computer file) and logistics all mapped out for your next submission BEFORE a ms can be bounced. If you then receive a rejection, immediately go through the process of turning that ms around and getting it back into the marketplace prior to throwing a hissy fit that ends in a blue funk of paralyzing depression. Giving up requires only fear and a lack of courage and leads nowhere. Not giving up is an end in itself, granting you a journey, and is the only way to reach Oz. That doesn’t mean you have to be stupid about which direction you set off for or stay on. Dead ends are all too common. But it does require that as you discover the best road for you, you take it.
Q. [Ranchi, India] You seem so free and full of energy in your Sullygrams. How does one achieve that? Were you always like that or did success just give you the luxury?
A. Mmmm, how to make the complex answer as simple as possible? Lemme take on the energy part first. Because, aside from the genetics (all my family enjoy very active longevity), I believe that energy is a direct consequence of freedom. You can’t reach your maximum output if you aren’t enthused, and you can’t be enthused if you’re living repressed, compromised, hypocritically or under some other kind of falseness. Writers especially need to be free. I’m not talking about the clichéd image of a bohemian artist, but a certain amount of nonconformity is obviously a part of creativity, and that means escaping the soul-crushing falseness I just described. And, yes, as far back as I can remember I’ve always rebelled against that kind of pressure. As I grew up, it became more of a conscious thing, I suppose, because many people yearn for that freedom but end up trapped in very unsatisfying lives. They try to fake their own fulfillment, taking to heart the expectations of friends, relatives, relationships, careers and society as they attempt to will themselves into roles that smother their most basic freedoms to think, feel, dream and just generally interact with the emotional, intellectual and psychological fullness of who they really are. For me, living a life of quiet desperation out of the misguided belief that it serves a greater good is (and was for a major chunk of my life) just tragically absurd. It never serves the greater good to let your life be wasted, and it isn’t noble. At best, it patronizes those you are fooling and is an affront to whatever created you. That said, I don’t condemn anyone for living under any kind of yoke if that’s how they spell S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y. In fact, anyone who thinks they’re not living a lie at least some of the time is living at least that much of a lie all of the time. Do I ever find myself trapped in a situation where I don’t want to crash someone else’s expectations at the same time that I need to carve out freedom for myself? Sure. But I will not let myself be bullied by fear and guilt. It’s so easy to get the guilt backwards – letting others shrink-wrap us, stunting that intellectual and emotional fullness I mentioned above. Isn’t it strange that so many of us feel guilty when we refuse to live DISHONESTLY? How wrong is that? But even that kind of usurpation can’t keep you from at least visiting freedom every day. It can be a place, a relationship, an outlet, a private communication, or – ideally – all of the above. My parents had exactly that – all of the above – so I know freedom can be shared. But if I had not grown up with that model, I’d probably tell you it’s impossible to be so mutually focused with someone else. I do not have that in my life, though I know that I was bred to it. Like a one-owner dog, my loyalties are single-minded and never-ending. A few years ago someone made me understand that about myself – that I need a substitute for what my parents had that I do not have, i.e. the all of the above. That, it seems to me, is the spark I must nurture daily, even if by myself or in pieces with others. Call it romantic idealism, really. If I lose the inspiration of something perfect and magical in my life, I lose my freedom.
Q. [Manchester, UK] Who are your favorite authors?
A. Oh, I could be in a lot of trouble with this one, so I’m just going to mention a few authors I don’t know personally. Vladimir Nabokov qualifies, as a side effect of being dead. Obscure, pedantic, plotless and full of self-told jokes, Nabokov nevertheless captures the afterghosts of light, shadows and echoes, and understands how to use time and memory better than any other writer I know. John Cheever could escape sequence in much the same way on occasion. And among the living, I love E. Annie Proulx’s work, and – my current favorite – anything by Mark Helprin. This is the Helprin who wrote WINTER’S TALE, not the Mark Helprin of the news media. I also wish I could read Carlos Ruiz Zafon in Spanish better than I do, though even the translations are passably good.
Q. [Catskill, NY…from a former swimmer of mine] Can you tell me the story about the time you pushed the shopping cart off the 10 meter platform…I am recalling stories from my youth to tell my daughter, she just turned 19 last week.
A. Ah, the Great Shopping Cart Fiasco. I’m so ashamed. Don’t know what came over me. But there it was, on the deck – a supermarket cart that kickboards were sometimes stored in. So when I saw it that fateful morning next to the 18-foot deep diving well in the 55-yard long pool, it just struck me that it would be magnificent to watch it descend from the 10-meter platform and break that crystal surface in the well. A 33-foot soar in the silence of the dawn and then a slow settling to the bottom like the Titanic. Hope to tell you, it was hell hauling it up there. Narrow, zigzag staircase ascending through all three platforms. But, hey, I was the 97-pound version of Superman in those days, right? (…hot damn, still am 
). Anyway, it must’ve taken 20 min. to drag it up those cocoa-matted stairs, clinging to the rungs with one hand, hanging onto the dead weight of the cart with the other while trying to thump it up one more step and another and another, all without committing sudden-death by pitching off the sprawling divers gestalt of platforms and boards (I am terrified of heights). So, when at last the cart was up there, I went through a little ritual of running it the full length of the platform and pushing it off the end, savoring the freefall and smiling with satisfaction – though it did not waft to the bottom like the Titanic but rather sank like a stone (duh). Then I turned to descend the stairs, and that’s when the Detroit police car pulled out of the bushes up to the iron fence next to the diving platform. Both officers got out of the car to regard me on high, and the ensuing conversation was brief but earnest. “Why did you do that, son?” floated up to me as in a dream. Realizing that I had been ambushed by a bush, and that they had been parked behind it through the whole preliminary of bloody cart being dragged up three stories, I allowed as to how I had brought the thing up there for the divers towels and that it had slipped. In retrospect, I can see that that was a tad lame…a ton lame actually. I probably should’ve said something like I had a seizure, or better yet, that Birdman [my swimmer] made me do it. But there it was, the treacherous absurdity “slipped.” The nice officers just kept smiling and staring. And then they told me to “get it out of there.” There? They couldn’t possibly mean out of the 18-foot deep well, right? The well whose steep sides sloped abruptly up to the 9-foot deep level? Yes, alas, they could mean that. And they stayed there for the next hour or so while Seaweed Sully set world records for frustration, for holding his breath, and for futile attempts to raise the Titanic. Each effort was the same: push the diabolical cart up the sloping sides of the well by kicking breaststroke like a banshee; and if it finally made it to the 9-foot level where it teetered on the slightly lesser slope of the 55-yard pool, hook one foot through the handle and frantically bob for air. I was like the Coyote and the cart was like the Roadrunner. Inevitably, air and gravity would win. Which is to say the cart would slide back into the depths, and I would gasp and gurgle for a while in plain view of two stony-faced cops. But then there came that one superb effort, which cost me several million brain cells (though I could not have had many more than that when I hatched the idea, could I), when I managed to get the cart not only out of the well, but a few feet further up the length of the 55-yard pool to where it was perhaps 8 feet deep. This worked well for the oxygen, though I was now developing Charlie horses. The idea here was that I had to get the cart out of the deep-well end of the pool and all the way to the other end, which was about 5 feet deep, so that I could somehow hoist it onto the deck. You may recall, Birdman, that the curb edge of the pool all the way around was probably a good 2 feet high as well, since it doubled as starting blocks. So, when I finally managed to breaststroke kick the cart the whole length of the pool as if it were a kickboard, it was another tactical feat to drag it out by hanging onto the poles of the ladder with one arm. The kicker – so to speak – was that when Detroit’s finest left the scene, another swimmer – can’t remember if it was BN or maybe KK (you remember when I trapped him in the sewer and also got Big John to serve the phony extradition papers on him after he broke out of jail in the Bahamas?) – came blithely onto the deck. Immediately I suggested that he haul the supermarket cart up to the 10-meter and push it off. Which that swimmer did. Alas, I scrutinized the bushes in vain, because no Keystone cops showed to make the pinch. Some days are just like that. [Photo at top is from the 10-meter, but you can only just see the start of the well at the very bottom of the pix]
Don’t forget to send me your own questions. Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
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Think back. Way back. Lying-in-your-bassinet back. What kind of formula were you raised on? No-no…I don’t mean breast milk/formula. I mean how was your life orchestrated? Dr. Spock baby? Schedules/organization/chaos/mommy-was-on-Valium? Meat and potatoes lifestyle? (Dunno…I’ve repressed all that)? The answer is very important to your imagination and creativity. No question, creativity can either be given wings or pushed off a cliff while we are still in the cradle – creatle.
