I used to live a clerk’s life. More specifically a married female sales representative raising two children in the same house as a husband who felt no need to assist with the housework life. I’ve had lots of experience with a clerk’s life: thirty-eight years to be specific. What I lacked was any concrete up-close and personal impersonation of an artist’s life. Nonetheless, once I retired and recovered from my clerk/drone’s life, I decided it was time to write my own stories. I had been unchained from the burdens of writing other people’s sales pitches and was free to tell the truth as I saw it, particularly because most of the people in these stories were either dead or living the lives of hermits who would be none the wiser. This, by definition, meant I was about to experience the artist’s life at long last. Therefore, two and a half years ago I began publishing these memoirs, Ma’s Journals. It’s been jolly good fun. However, once I had six months worth of blogs in the can I ran out of excuses for not writing a story longer than 2,000 words. There was a particular tale that had been nagging at me to be written. I weaseled out by turning it into a pitch for a movie. I even found a willing director. The only roadblock was that the film needed to be produced in India and my Hindi is limited to “come in” and “let’s go.” The director said that would be no problem. He knew several screenwriters in Mumbai who could turn my story into a Hinglish script. All I’d have to do was expand the tale from 8 pages to, say, seventy thousand words, with dialogue, scene setting, and backstories for all the characters. This was somewhat daunting, so I procrastinated by doing the logical thing first. I pasted a year’s worth of blogs together and called it a humorous Memoir. Then, armed with the latest edition of Writer’s Market, I began to send out agent queries. The days when one could send a query directly to a publishing house have long gone unless you’re Oprah or Ellen. Now one’s options are either to find an agent who wants to pitch your work to a publisher or go the route of self publishing. You would think self publishing would be right up my alley since I’d spent years promoting books through mail order, retail outlets, and distributors. But that was the problem. I’d used up all my marketing energy. It was time for someone else to do that and leave me alone to write more things for her/him to pitch. Therefore, as far as I was concerned self-publishing was out and agent queries were in. Those in the know told me this meant I was now formally living the artist’s life. That sounded exotic. I liked it. No longer was I a hobbyist, a dabbler, a dreamer of some longed-for existence. Because I was putting words on paper, posting them on social media, registering a collection, and peppering the literary agency world with pleas, I’d earned the right to say “I am living the artist’s life.” Quel Plaisir! In January of 2019, I made a vow that I would have an agent by April and be published by the end of the year. By the fall of that year I faced the fact that what I had actually done was found another artifact for my copious list of collectibles. This collection was agency rejections. It appeared that in 2019, Young Adult novels were in and Memoirs were out. One agent was so kind as to write that she shared a similar background as mine and would love to read my book but for the life of her she couldn’t think of a single publisher who might be interested. I have that lovely yes-no pinned to my Vision Board, the slab of cork people said I should put on my wall to display my best imagined future. It sits next to a few other endearing yes-no’s, especially the one that said to let her know if I ever come up with a Young Adult novel. By the end of the year I had a remarkably large collection of rejection emails. They used to be called rejection letters but neither agents nor publishers accept things printed on paper anymore, which is somewhat odd considering their line of work. They will sometimes accept email queries and other times require you to use the services of online sites created specifically for the purpose of forwarding your email to an agent. The exception is if you’re a personal friend of Oprah or Ellen or you bumped into the agent at a trade show and made a positive impression. My collection of personal rejections was so large I was told my campaign was a huge success. It meant that an unusually high number of agent’s assistants had actually read the first three chapters and were impressed enough with my potential to send a “No Thanks” email rather than just deleting the submission and forgetting I exist. I’m told two hundred or so submissions resulting in fifty or more form letter rejections is a good thing. I still haven’t figured out why a 25% negative response rate is considered great when in truth I was 100% rejected. But then, I’m a newbie at this novel writing thing. Then January of 2020 rolled around and the story that had been knocking for attention in my head for two years demanded to be written. Since what most of the agents really wanted from me were Young Adult novels, that’s what I would now give them. I’d turn my coming-of-age action adventure movie into a young adult story which would be snapped up by the agent who’d told me to be sure and let her know when I finished it. Right. The synopsis was already cast in stone; it was just a matter of filling in the blanks and that’s what I did with the first draft. I told myself what the story was about. Then I realized that no one else could see inside my head to view the scenery. I’d have to go back and describe it. Draft number two was for that purpose but somewhere between describing the eating utensils and how the bedrooms were situated, new supporting characters decided to show up on the page and insist that I tell their stories as well as those of the heroes. Huh. I wasn’t planning on doing that, but they refused to be deleted. In fact, they are already dictating a sequel of their very own. But first I had to finish draft number two. Something else I discovered that I never knew before: with novel writing I had to edit up instead of editing down. You see, after thirty years of revising submissions with too many words and reducing them to shorter sound bites, I’d lost the ability to go into great detail. Those of you who are acquainted with me personally can stop snorting in derision. Yes, it’s true that I am famous for droning on at length when talking about archaic topics of interest to no one else in the room but me. Yet when it came to writing, every instinct told me to shorten the sentences. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the opposite was true for novel writing. Suddenly I needed to stop being the pair of scissors and start being the film crew. Ah! That was a kick in the pants. By draft number three, I’d immersed myself into sixteenth century horse archery to such an extent I began to worry I was going into too much finicky detail. Who cares how an arrowhead is forged? Just pick up the arrow and shoot somebody. Draft three was a rollercoaster ride ranging from pedantic details to the excitement of the kill. In time, I ran out of energy and was happy enough with the results to send drafts out to people who actually spoke Gujarati and knew the culture. Apparently Google search had served me well. A few changes were made and in June I was armed with the latest Guide to Literary Agents and began round two of the Great Query Challenge. This time the rejections began rolling in faster than ever. Agents were sitting at home, spending their days filtering through the thousands of queries pouring in from would-be authors who were themselves quarantined at home due to the great plague, using this enforced exile to finish the Great American Novel they’d previously not had time to complete. In fact, half the agencies were/are closed to submissions due to the overflow. Instead of reading about each agent’s preference before submitting a query, now the first step is to go straight to their submissions page to find out if they’re even open. Half of the best targets are closed for the duration. This means it’s only taken me two months to get to the letter P in the agency directory instead of the four months it took last year. However, those who are willing to hear from me are more likely to send a swift no thanks. Therefore, my ratio of query to reject is higher, meaning I’m really, truly on the right path. Finally, at long last, I can justifiably call myself an artist. I have proof in the form of two years’ worth of “No market for your work,” “Loved it, can’t sell it,” “Yes! I mean no thanks,” and my personal favorite “Best of luck in your future endeavors.” The only problem is that no one told me what living the artist’s life REALLY means. It means starvation, that’s what it means. Suddenly I am kissing cousins with Sisyphus. You remember, the dude who pissed off Zeus and is still trying to roll a bolder uphill to this very day? One thing for certain, it’s not for the faint of heart. The average lead time from completion to production is probably twenty years. Given that I may not have twenty coherent years left, you’re probably thinking I’m ready to throw in the towel and continue having fun dabbling with blogs read by a discerning few. Well, yes and no. Next to my computer is a greeting card sent to me by my sister-in-law the artist. It reads “Congratulations on your First Book!” She’s not saying first published book. No. She means I actually wrote a book. I did, and I intend to write others. My mission now is to spend an hour a day writing and another hour a day trying to get someone’s attention. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. It’s not that much different from being an ad copy writer after all, is it? You write a few lines and then ask someone to buy this great thing now. The only difference is if you write ad copy you usually get paid whereas if you’re an artist you usually need a part-time job to keep food on the table. Am I discouraged? Nope. Am I surprised? Maybe a little bit. Did I have to pull a different attitude out of my hat? Definitely. What I need now is an alligator’s hide, a determination to persevere, and Social Security payments. That’s the Artist’s Life. Who knew?