Tomorrow my first book comes out. Today I got my hair done. I did this to prepare.
This process of writing something and then rewriting it and then, whoa, rewriting it eighteen more times, and then seeing it become a physcial object, a thing on a shelf that anyone — anyone! — can pick up and read, is so mysterious that even while it’s happening it feels like magic. I mean this both as something alchemical and/or having to do with witches, and also in a heartstrings & wonderment kind of way. I mean, it feels great, but it also feels like something that has happened to you, a story you stepped into, a spell that’s been cast. On the other hand, there was all that rewriting, and the hard drive dying last summer was the opposite of magic, and you worked really hard on something for a long time.
I think the best fairy tales combine magic and elbow grease in just this way: a young person winds up alone in a dark wood and in order to make it through she has to endure a series of trials. At some point early on she encounters a frog or a duck or maybe a crone sitting on a stump. She is kind to the pond dweller/stump sitter and goes on her journey. Sometimes she is clever or brave, but her most significant trait is perseverance in the face of obstacles. Later, of course, when it looks like all is lost, the crone reveals herself to be POOF! a powerful witch, and the amphibian turns out to be a handsome fellow of large income and few resentments. The lost child returns home with a sack of gold, or becomes queen or king and lives, yes, happily ever after.
Should it happen, then, that any frog prince is lurking around here, I want my hair to look good. Not because I want to marry him, poor greenie.
I want him to know I take this job seriously.
