Sorry for the light – in every respect – blogging. My brain is full of stuff, but it’s having a hard time finding its way to the blog, for some reason. I am not sure why that is. Probably the Holy Spirit prompting prudence.
So, anyway, I finished chapter one of the new opus in the wake of three rejections from publishers received last week via The Agent. Finishing the first chapter wasn’t hard in that context, but moving on to the second has proved a bit of a challenge, fighting the “What’s the point” questions, even though one of the rejections was what we call a “good rejection” – affirming the quality of the work, but simply saying that they didn’t think they could market it. This is not a cop-out. I’m involved in publishing, and have for years now walked down the aisles of trade shows with my husband as he points to books and says, “I rejected that one…and that one…and that one…” mostly because the submissions didn’t fit the OSV profile and it fit better in other places. I get it. But part of me doesn’t because I do have what they call in the biz a platform. It’s fairly small and low to the ground, but it’s there, and no one seems to be grasping that quite yet.
So there’s that and attendant angst and there’s a parish festival this weekend, a daughter’s 16th birthday early next week, a dad’s 73rd birthday a day later, and then the fact that daughter got into a local production of High School Musical and has piano lessons and debate practice and Michael’s in Charleston and Myrtle Beach and I have a 500-page manuscript from Son #2 which I need to finish reading, not just to give him my general impressions, but to help him discern chapters that could stand alone as part of a portfolio for an MFA submission.
And then I keep getting absorbed in my ongoing quest to understant the modern landscape of modern American religion,  which inolves me watching videos like this, fascinated (particularly at the exchange that happens about 3 minutes in), and then I follow with great interest the reactions to the Motu Proprio, and then there’s the never-ending problems in Orange County brought to light again with the release of Bishop Brown’s deposition so on and so on and so on….