Another Monday means another personal story of overcoming rejection. This week, The Writing Barn welcomes middle grade author Sue Cleveland, who paints us a delightfully vivid, metaphorical interpretation of the writing process.
The Pausing Place
by Sue Cleveland
The Pausing Place: a yawning canyon I come to in that time and space after I have completed a revision and sent it into the world. The four sisters of accountability are with me. They are a thundering band of companions: Doubt, Regret, Failure, and Procrastination. If I am honest, their role has always been to keep the silence away.
Silence is heavy in this in-between space of a project’s end and the hope of a new idea. This space demands trust. Trust is hard for me. It demands walking across a yawning canyon covered with a sheet of cracked glass.
The glass is my faith in my creative process, a transparent platform that allows me to look down or up. Always on the lookout, I take the first step onto the cracks, which really are spaces in my heart left by rejections and my desire to publish my middle grade mysteries. True, the openings also let in good: compassion, belief in an energy some call love, and accountability which has the potential to keep me emotionally honest. But the cracks in my heart are vulnerable to silence. That is my tripping stone.
Doubt, Regret, Failure, and Procrastination keep an eye out for silence as it stretches. I wait for new ideas or word on projects queried. To fill the void, the four sisters become raucous, jealous, if not testy –good companions.
Procrastination is a two-headed emerald snake who beckons me seductively.
“No need to keep writing,” she says. “If you stop right now, you won’t fail. You will be stopping of your own free will so you can paint.”
I tend to flip off Procrastination; she’s a cross-eyed sister afraid of prioritizing.
Failure is Procrastination’s fraternal, goat-like, silky twin. She’s a moaner and a naysayer who enjoys being right. Who, when she opens a rejection note says, “See! You should never have tried. There is logic in not trying. Better to put your head down and eat grass.”
To which Regret, the lovely, cranky, silver-haired crone chuckles, “She would be miserable if she didn’t try.”
When the Duchess of Doubt places her fist to her crimson lips, Regret holds up a hand.
“I’m warning you, Doubt. I don’t care how well you are dressed, don’t go there. Doubt, I’m serious. Be quiet!”
As the band of sisters continues to caterwaul, I tell the lovely crone, Regret, “Your words allow me to, once again, lean into a season of longing for success.”
Regret nods.
“If success does not come this season,” she says, “you will have earned a good cry, but you will never stop being a storyteller. Nor should you ever believe Failure and her wallowing trap. Nor should you follow Procrastination’s seductive slither down a snowshoe rabbit’s hole. And don’t even get me started on screwy sister Doubt and her fainting spells.”
Regret is correct.
I whistle for my sisters of accountability to follow.
Procrastination is nowhere, probably slid after a goose.
Duchess Doubt climbs on Failure’s furry back.
I take hold of Regret’s hand and say farewell to the comfort of rewriting a beloved story. I slide my foot onto the cracked glass—one more time—and leave The Pausing Place.
Sue Clev
eland was born in a hunting lodge in England. She is a widely traveled writer and award-winning artist. A member of SCBWI, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime and Writers’ League of Texas, Sue is in The Pausing Place as she queries her middle grade mystery Thieves on the Loose.