Waiting for Godot.

The below is an extract of an email I yesterday wrote one of my closest friends, Mitchell Landsberg, a veteran staff writer for the Los Angeles Times: I was trying to explain why I hadn't phoned him in several weeks. I short, my new, second book manuscript has been at my publisher (PublishAmerica, Baltimore) for more than six weeks. I have heard zero from them; they haven't, understandably answered my queries; and my obsessive need to get a rejection or acceptance has left me unable--or unwilling--to do anything else but wait.

I suspect thousands of book writers go through this for months at a time, and I commend their strength and patience. I have, and try ignore, myriad outlandish fantasies of what may have happened to my ms, "Clovis Diary--Welcome to the Ghetto."

"Clovis Diary" is a seriocomic look at my highly idiosyncratic, low-income, multiracial, multiethnic neighborhood--the Ghetto--here in otherwise white, affluent, Protestant, conservative Clovis, Calif., a showcase city of 100,000 in our state's vast irrigated desert midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles."

Anyway, Mitchell, mensch that he is, called me back out of concern within a few hours of getting my email. The long talk we had much lifted my mood about my book and for that I thank him no end.

EXCERPT FROM MY EMAIL TO Mitchell:

I've been wanting to talk with you in general but now keep
putting off calling you because I've lapsed into a reactive-depressive funk over
still not hearing from my publisher after six weeks, which I know is stupid
because the firm has hundreds of new manuscripts to evaluate at any given
time--still, I wait for the phone to ring, check my email five times a day and
scamper to my mailbox daily hoping for a letter.

Problem is: I don't want to do anything but wait; I don't want to write, read
and do all the other things that make me feel happy and productive. I'm normally
quite patient about waiting to hear from literary agents and publishers, but
this time I feel some pounding urgency to hear about my Clovis ms so that if
rejected I can start the arduous hunt for another publisher; if accepted, I can
begin a new book project.

If my mood doesn't change in the coming weeks, I may have my shrink boost my
Prozac dosage.

But enough babbling. We'll talk soon.


Love, Eric