June 24, 2025
Pausing in my querying efforts to grab some lunch, I sidled up my precocious pup, whose days involve staring outside in an effort to spot any squirrels of his disliking. At the window I watched the vibrant summer world, one that today is coated in a heat wave of astonishing weight. I had not ventured out yet, the idea of boiling under the sun less than appealing. But as I stood there, I noticed something odd: a bird, attempting to fly, but instead smacking over and over again into an outside storage chest. Why was it doing that? As I looked closer, I realized it was a baby, a fledgling that must be from a nearby nest, taking it upon itself to learn to fly today.
Looking around for its mother, I spotted a second baby bird, its fuzzy feathers lightly moving in the stifling breeze. As I watched, the mother—much smaller in stature and a different color—appeared to it, food in mouth at the ready. She fed it, right there on the ground. It was a beautiful sight. But when I looked back at the other baby, it was no longer there, no longer next to the chest. Worry nagged at me for this bird I’d only just met, and after rationalizing my need to make sure it was okay, I stepped out into the smothering heat. The mother, at this point, had retreated to a tree branch, and she belted out a song of danger to her babes, warning them of my presence. I crept slowly, afraid I might stumble upon it without realizing it. But finally, I spotted it on a rock, its eyes wide with wonder, or perhaps, fear. I crouched, not daring to get too near but taking in its fresh feathers, its smooth head, its small beak. And for a moment, we both drank each other in. For this baby bird, I may have well been the first human it had seen, and for some reason, I felt it was curious and not scared as we gazed at each other. I marveled at this little life, a speck in time, an insignificant creature that will no doubt be dust like us all someday. And even as sweat dripped down my back, I shivered. It didn’t attempt to fly as I crouched there, simply staring at me instead. We both searched for understanding, but in that moment, I realized, sometimes you don’t have to understand. The beauty is in the unknowing.
As I talked to it gently, it began to chirp, the sound so small in comparison to its mother’s song. It had not found its voice yet, but it would. It had not learned to fly yet, but it would. It had not soared to the highest unknown yet, but it would. Somehow, I knew this. As I walked back inside, it struck me that we are all like this baby bird in life at some point. Not in the fact of age or abilities, but in our dreams, our hopes. It had emerged into the fire today, hoping to fly but not yet there. I have thrown myself into the publishing world multiple times, and perhaps, I felt ready to fly but wasn’t there yet. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have attempted it before. Like this baby bird, it is practice, it is persistence, it is necessary.
Climbing my steps, I saw his sibling fly up, its new wings holding its body steady, and this other baby bird accomplishing the task at hand faster than my companion. And yet, again, we each fly at different times, we each arrive at our destinations by different routes. I glanced back over my shoulder one more time at my new friend. He hopped and flopped, hopped again until his wings brought him slightly into the air, landing inside of our hanging fern. Safely enveloped in its lush greenery, it rested. Small flights, but ones that are still getting it where it needs to go. Sometimes, when the world seems so large and overwhelming, when the news and chaos of our country is too loud, when it feels out of control, as I’m sure this big world felt to the baby bird leaving its nest, I will try to come back to this moment and realize, if only I keep going, I’ll get somewhere. Even as this baby had hit the chest over and over when starting, so do we fail over and over as we attempt to land somewhere. But one thing rings true throughout the ages: baby flights will someday allow you to soar high.
Side note: as I came back inside, a post popped up on a feed of mine, and within it, a sentence talking about how it’s at the broken places where the light gets in. I’m taking that as a sign to keep going since my book out with agents right now is all about this same idea. In fact, it’s called At the Broken Places. When I went to screenshot this most random piece of advice, my phone shut off instead, and when I reopened it, the page was gone. A brief second of light to tell me that I’m on the right track. A small hop as I attempt to take flight.
June 16, 2025
I’m about to jump back into the query trenches. It’s been a hot minute. When I first started writing before COVID, I was determined and spirited. I sent out new batches of queries regularly, got feedback and requests, waited and wrote more, tried again….the whole drill. But then life happened, and I took a small detour, breaking from the publishing world for a few years. Even with the distance and new perspectives that time away allowed, writing was never far from my mind. It was an itch that needed scratching, flaring up at times into a raging eczema. Probably not the best way to describe something that brings joy, but writing can be both beautiful and painful. It can be alienating and annoying as much as it is connective and calming. Perhaps that’s why so many are addicted to its lure. At your fingertips, you can craft whole worlds. Stories made from a page full of symbols that can elicit emotions deep within our souls. You can shape a character, pulling them from history into the minds of readers fully formed. It’s magical. I’ve often talked with my therapist about how writing gives me a sense of control in a very uncontrollable world. I can decide the outcome, the way things pan out. I can say the things I didn’t say to someone, go on the adventure I didn’t take, travel back into a time I didn’t know. But putting that effort, that carefully curated creation, out into the world is a different story of its own. It’s not magical to be honest. It’s a task that’s hard to carry with persistent rejection and heartbreaking results. It’s everything that writing is not: mechanical, menacing, and merciless. It’s online dating for an agent with a piece of your soul exposed in a few words. It’s praying and hoping to get noticed, to be told it’s good enough to sell. Publishing is a business, after all. Whereas writing is a creative craft, the act of trying to get published is systematically and subjectively brutal. They are like the sun and moon-–both with jobs to do and needing one another while also alone in their purposes. All of this to say, it’s time for me to try again. I’ve been chipping away at the stories that almost made it out there, that grabbed the attention of agents but didn’t get where I’d wanted them to go. I’ve edited, revised, reworked, revised some more, used all the tools I can find from editors to beta readers to web classes, all the while toiling away in this never ending cycle called book writing. This time around in the trenches, I’m a little older, hopefully a little wiser, and desperately trying to be a little more successful. Wish me luck as I plunge back into the cold end of the pool.
June 9, 2025
I can’t be the only one who hears a sentence in their mind and thinks, “that would be a great line to start a book.” So many times throughout my day I find myself composing opening lines, thinking of the emotional punch they might provide or the intrigue they are sure to elicit from readers. In one sentence, it should beg the reader to ask: Who is this character? What do they want? What just happened to them? It’s these same questions that dart around like moths to the light in my mind when approaching social situations with new people to meet for the first time. It only makes sense that when someone approaches a book, the same questions smack into the foreground of the mind, searching for not just a deeper meaning or connection, but perhaps for relief from the stress of our own lives.
And yet, like so many of these questions and opening lines that bounce into my thoughts, the path often leads nowhere. It’s just a step, a brief pause, and then, like you, I’m pulled back into my own predicaments, be it bills, laundry, appointments to keep, places to be. This leads me to ask a vital question in not just writing but in life: How can a book, and a person, keep our interests beyond the initial curiosity that as humans, we are programmed to have but not wired to keep? With social media fighting for every second of our attention, sticking to one thing, one book for more than a single line or page seems almost impossible.
It’s the same insatiable affair with book ideas. I can’t count the number of times (not because I can’t count, mind you, but because it is so numerous I have forgotten the number) that a person has uttered the words: wouldn’t that make a great book? And yes, usually it would, especially if it starts with the profound and universal book set up question of, “what if…?” Again, as humans, we innately are drawn to the mysterious, to wondering about different courses of action, different paths we didn’t or couldn’t take for whatever reason. But like those decisions we left floating away in the winds, the idea often fizzles out so we can get back to the life at hand, the mostly mundane moments we do somehow find ourselves immersed within. Only later, as the lights fall low and the sun sets on another day, do we sometimes hear the whispers of those lost dreams, those lost ideas. They may reappear in our nightly escapades, the world beyond our lids that slides back into oblivion once the light of day casts its long rays of responsibility back onto us.
I can’t be the only one who thinks about all the lives we haven’t lived, all the what ifs that may not only be great opening lines for a bestseller but in our own lives. Just look at Marvel and their dive into the multiverse, the alternate realms that could somehow quench our thirst for knowing what could have been had we just done this or that instead.
But that leaves us all at the same place then, doesn’t it? Lost within the very nature of our curiosity, waiting for something to stick, wanting for a line to last longer than the trifle second in which we gave our attention to it. So yes, indeed, most things could make great opening lines. Yes, they would be great books. But the real rub, the one that we don’t say aloud but that we all know is true: it takes more than just a great opening line to find your way to the end credits. Whether it be ideas, dreams, books, or life, it’s the same. And yet ….wouldn’t it be fantastic if during that video montage at the end of our favorite stories, as the notes soar high in the still vibrating air of deeper realization, welling up within each and everyone of us are the emotions of a lifetime, leaving not a dry eye, or sore heart, in sight.
A moment of musing that perhaps will lead you to consider not just an opening line, but how to make it your story.