CHRISTMAS
After all the struggle a bit of rest. For over four months now, as winter ended, I have been wrestling with myself and everyone around me, coming out of this school year, finishing off books, a final edit of one and the original of another. That other one, that new one is a triumph. Every story that comes out is like some new child you have labored long to bear. When I think of this new one, when I think of holding it real and actual, even the galley of it in my hands, I think of how it almost didn’t make it. I think of its very beginnings, the first thoughts of it. When it wasn’t even a word on the page, when it was just the idea behind the logos. And now it is the word incarnate. This is the virgin birth. Was there ever a virgin, pleased as me, to bring his child into the world?
I think of the time I nearly lost it, that story, it was almost destroyed. I paid dearly to get it back, and all the long days and nights, the exhaustion, the depression, not only over those pages, but the pages of my own personal life. Me, sitting on my friend’s sofa, busily proofing and proofing again. Me, too tired to go on, knowing I’d come to the end of this, but not knowing when.
And now we begin to approach some end.
The best way to give thanks is, after all of these months of mess, just be quiet.
And for now do nothing.
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