Why I have to walk on water

I realized today that somewhere along the line, I had stopped believing I'd be successful.

We writers all start the process of writing with our hopes and dreams spread out like a pristine white handkerchief, ironed smooth, maybe with lace at the borders. Fresh and crisp and clean.

If we're persistent and optimistic--if we're smart--we'll protect that unsullied white expanse, because that flimsy piece of cloth is the magic carpet that will fly us over the abyss of discouragement. It's the sail that will power us through the storms of rejection. We must dream, and believe in those dreams, to prosper as writers. To survive as writers.

But I fell into a trap.

There's a story in the Gospels where the disciples are alone on a boat out in the Sea of Galilee, and a storm comes up and they fear they will sink. Then Jesus appears, walking across the sea. The disciples thought he was a ghost. (Well, what else would be walking on water?) Peter, an impulsive soul if ever there was one, decides to walk on the water, too, as a test. He does just fine until he notices how high the waves are and how hard the wind is blowing (the act of walking on water would have been just as astonishing, and impossible, if the water had been still as glass, but I don't think that occured to him just then) and his faith evaporates like so much mist. He trades one reality for another, and sinks beneath the waves.

When I started writing, I didn't know that what I was doing was impossible. Oh, not the actual writing; the impossibility was manifest in the fact I was writing what was turning out to be a huge book. As I began to educate myself on the publishing world and what does and does not sell, it became more and more clear that no agent or editor was going to take on a novel the size of mine. Friends and fellow writers told me to persevere, that the length didn't matter if a novel is good, but I began to doubt them. The more I read and heard--from blogs, conferences, and so forth--the more I became convinced, at some level, that I was going to fail. That I had spent years writing a book that would never see print. Like Peter, I initially stepped out on the strength of my hope and faith, but then got distracted by the storm. One reality replaced another, and I began to sink.

It was a more gradual process than what happened to Peter, who went under like a lead brick and had to be fished out by the long-suffering Jesus. Myself, I just began to make my dreams smaller. I folded that beautiful white handkerchief of hope in half, then in quarters, smaller and smaller, and finally one day I just stuffed it deep in a pocket. Who needed it? Frilly old thing. Perhaps I owed it to myself to finish the behemoth novel, yes, but after that...well, I guess I'd just have to write something else. Something more publishable. I must be realistic, after all.

Being realistic got Peter a bellyful of seawater.

What it got me was the near-death of a potential writing career. Over before it had fairly begun. Because with the retirement of my aspirations for the novel came also the retirement of any motivation to finish it. What was the point?

Well, there's the finishing-what-you-start point. That kept me going, barely.

But it's not enough to float me over those chasms and sail me through those storms. I need my dreams back. I need to believe again. People with small dreams have small successes. People with no dreams...

It's not easy, second time around. The hankie's got pocket fuzz on it. It's creased. It's musty. But while I can't go back, I can go forward. I've (nearly) written a big book that will require a big miracle and that means big faith and big dreams. I have no choice but to ignore the nay-sayers, the pessimism inherent in the industry, the hard-and-fast facts that insist no agent will take a chance on me. If I'm going to get this book published, I have to walk on water. Even if everyone tells me I can't.

In fact, there are probably a few cynics out there reading this who are saying, "Well, but there's such a thing as statistical probability (and impossibility). " [I expect the other disciples, when they saw Peter climbing out of the boat, thought much the same thing.] "You can't beat the odds just because you say you will. Faith will not change the facts."

Oh, but it can. That's exactly how odds are beaten. That's how the impossible becomes possible. That's how Peter walked on water.

And I will, too.

I must.

***
Jona had lost interest in the beetle and was solemnly absorbed in her usual game of arranging little pebbles into obscure patterns in the dirt. But she looked up suddenly and asked, "Where are we going now, Mama?"

Miren did not answer immediately, because in truth she had no idea. It had been exhilarating to leave the Kesmu at last, and yet she felt oddly vulnerable, as if she'd wandered out half-clothed. She rose and looked about. They were alone except for a nearby trio of speckled goats—strays, no doubt—and a hawk wheeling in the opalescent sky. Low clouds lay over the broken lands to the east like shreds of gray silk, their undersides stained rose-gold.

Once she had asked her lover, What will I do with the power when it blooms? How will I use it?

He had smiled and leaned over her, his pale hair sweeping across her small, naked breasts. Come to me, he had said, and I will show you.

But how will I find you?

The magic will lead you, he had murmured and stopped her questions with his kisses.

But he had lied, or else the fault lay in her, because she had no magic to lead her, only love and desperation and memories that refused to fade.

"Mama?" Jona tugged at her hand.

Miren started, realizing she was flushed and trembling. "What is it, sweeting?"

"I said, where are we going?"

"There is someone we have to find."

"Shian?" asked Jona, brightening. She had been fond of him and had cried when he disappeared.

"No, someone else. He—" Miren hesitated. "You will like him, too, I promise."

"Does he live there?"

Miren looked where Jona pointed, past the combed rows of vines to a low rise of northern hills looped by a buff ribbon of road. Beyond the hills, the Temple buildings were clearly visible, as pristine and fragile as a scattering of eggshell in their nest of pine and spruce. Above the compound, the dark-skirted ramparts of the Urtz rose, range upon range folding into the mist of distance.

"No, sweeting, he doesn't live there." An idea took shape. "But Alazne does. You remember her?" She bent to swaddle Lusio in his blanket and snug him back into the sling. "We can ask her where to look for him."

Miren knew Alazne did not approve of her. But Alazne had not been thrust into the dust-and-brick warren of the Kesmu at the age of thirteen, forced to make her way alone with a baby and no skills except the carnal ones a faery lover had taught her. Miren had soon discovered that men would pay her money to perform the same union with her, though there was no longer any magic to it. But when she could find no other job, hunger warred with reluctance and won the inevitable victory. She lay down with one man after another and let them do what they would, as long as they paid.

These were things that Alazne, for all her intelligence and education, did not understand. But she had a kind heart and a sharp curiosity, and perhaps, with all her learning, she might know where Miren could find the faery people—the Tsuroi, she corrected herself. Kepa had called them Tsuroi. Real people, not faeries or spirits.

But magical, all the same.

Jona ran ahead, scattering the grazing goats among the vines in one of her abrupt shifts from gravity to child-like glee. Miren followed, while something new awakened in her heart, a frail seedling of hope thrusting through the snows of a long, cold winter.

(from The Knife-Giver, ch. 21 "Storm.")