Whew! I have many worries about my abilities, but I'm culling old essays, writing new ones, and trying hard to not think about rejection, too much. I'm feeling as though I'm being awfully presumptuous that I can just do a thing and get it published. But I'm just going to presume that it's not that hard until it proves otherwise.

Determined to not be heartbroken.

I'm not one of the published ones (yet), but Allyson, you'd probably do well to develop a book proposal, since it's non-fic.

I know it's mostly a marketing tool, but it seems to me that it can also help organize your thoughts about how to proceed.

This link: [link] gives some pointers.

FTR, I'd buy such a book.

Allyson--I don't know much about book-length nonfiction writing, except that the process is a bit different than for fiction. But I think you should go for it. As I keep telling myself, the only way to guarantee you'll never see a book in print is to not try.

Allyson, email me. I'm here for backup, for agent advice, for editing and for anything else. sf_deb@yahoo.com gets me.

I was out taking Bev and Ginger to the airport. My house is untenanted.

For this week's "escape" challenge:

This Flight Tonight (for the escape challenge)

I've done my time here.

It hasn't been bad, despite my wanting to romanticise the negatives. I did school here, and theatre here. I ate freshly-made cannoli, and watched giant terrifying floats bobbing ominously over Fifth Avenue during the Macy's parade. I saw Paul Simon here, the Beatles at Shea, Bob Dylan before he was Dylan.

But everything I want is in California, the Bay Area, blue and green. The man I want is there. The music I love is there.

I leave my tenseness, my anger, my need to compete, on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, and fly away.

Ooh. That's good, deb. I can feel that.

I'm mulling over this drabble. The ironic bit is I'm actually in the midst of writing an escape scene, but I'm still trying to think of a way to distill its essence into 100 words.

I'm having trouble with this one, too. I don't know what my problem is, perhaps that I'm so content where I am right now that escape is tough to deal with. Hmm. Maybe I should go that way, what got me here.

I started another all-quotes-all-the-time one, but it sucked, too. Hmf.

Well, here's a try. I'll let the theme rattle around in my head for a while and try another later.

sand

She could pick things up in quantities of five. That was what five years in inventory control had done for her.

Now it was time. But they only made it to Kansas. They waited there. Brick small-town streets. Good jobs, no more debts. Waited.

She had quit her job a month ago, when the towers fell. Wise, wasn’t it, to leap into uncertainty when the world was falling apart.

Half thought them crazy. Half envied their freedom. But it didn’t matter, because they were getting paid to sit in the desert and play music and hang out with kids. Escaped.

Do I ask people in my essays if they prefer anonymity? Is that the classy thing to do? Is it customary?