Mrs. Franzos: No Vacancy

Photo: Joshua Franzos

Thanks to a year of working from home, my once rigid daily schedule is toast. I have new, bad habits--getting up a whole two hours later than I was previously. I have some new, good habits--though, nothing comes to mind. Regardless, there are patterns and behaviors that will be hard to shake, if and when we get back to "normal." And strangely, the thought of returning to normal has been panic inducing for me. Do I like working from home? Or do I just hate commuting more? Slow work periods at home often meant hours of uninterrupted writing which provided the luxury of looking at both the forest and the trees of my novel. Truthfully, this deep dive would not have been possible without our collective sojourn into COVID-19 isolation. However, the reduced socialization and the general monotony of day-in-day-out sameness has not done good things to my mental health. It's hard to know what to root for anymore, but the knowledge that my days of poring over my edit would come to an end in September 2021 haunted me.

I had to finish. If I couldn't cut the words and finish my novel during a pandemic, would I ever? I've been writing one book for nearly ten years.

photo: Joshua Franzos

Failure not being an option, I jettisoned the stuff that ate time and my limited quarantine energy (this blog, instagram posturing). I swiveled my full creative beam into the cutting of 39,054 words, yet keeping the story's core intact, but also stronger and better. It was a tall order, but I did it. I finished in July, and it only took three years and seven months.

The first time I finished my novel, the first draft mind you, was September 23, 2016. I was so excited and proud, I popped a bottle of Dom Perignon. Now, I roll my eyes because it's gone through so many edits and versions since then, I truly don't know what number pass I'm on. It doesn't matter. If what I'm told about literary agents and publishers is true, and I'm fortunate enough to land one, there will be many more edits and passes on my manuscript in the future. It's never ending.

Meryl Franzos, red wool hat, vintage bathroom photo shoot

photo: Joshua Franzos

Oh, and work informed us that October 2021 is the new tentative back-to-the-office date due to the continued viral spread of covid variants--also never-ending.

The point of all this is, for the first time in a long time, I'm not straddling the real world and a fictional world. As I look for an agent and busy myself with the administrative side of writing, my consciousness is popped up like a prairie dog on high alert. Anxious AF. Trying to prepare for winter and worst case scenarios. Worrying about catching Delta. Worried about accidentally spreading it. Checking my email every few minutes, hoping for responses from the umpteen agents I've queried. Each day that passes without a response, more cracks appear in my cuvee blend of hubris and optimism. The cracks widen and gape, and that's how The Fear gets in.

I want to be anywhere but this perpetual state of unknown.

Prevailing writer wisdom says to immediately start writing a new story. Or take a vacation. Anything, to get your mind out of the dark corners of your imagination. You know, the what-ifs and what-would-you-dos? The one niggling thought of the last literary agent on earth rejecting the book you'd spent ten years writing. What do you do with your life then?

photo: Joshua Franzos

Even though it seems like we're frozen in a catch 22--Time marches on, beholden to no one. So, in an effort to delay another existential crisis and alleviate some chronic cabin fever, we booked a vacation, and pretended for a little while that we had ninety-nine problems, but aging and the creative process wasn't one.