Once, when Josh and I were living in Hoboken (never again, never again, never again) he gave us a present, and hired some ecologically-correct cleaners to clean our apartment. My mom had been sick for a long time, and we had been going back and forth from Jersey to Massachusetts on a weekly basis, and cleaning had fallen off the priority list. The one thing he asked the cleaners not to touch though, was the bookshelves. I had had my biggest meltdown about how much I hated living in Hoboken on the floor next to those bookshelves. Simply, I had spent hours putting the books away, and was unable to reconcile the fact that I wanted to be anywhere but there with the fact that I had just alphabetized and categorized my books, which supposedly symbolized home for me. It was not a good day.
Now, I order my books in categories, i.e., classic fiction, new fiction, non-fiction, Yiddish, French, children's, plays, books on music, books of music, zines and comics, white nationalism, and books by friends -- and then alphabetize them within those categories. Josh asked the cleaners to leave the books alone, because he didn't want them to get out of order, after I had gone through some trauma to get them in order. When I came home and discovered that someone had cleaned the house, what I really noticed was that my books had all been re-arranged, and were now organized by height -- tall to short, left to right, within shelves. Disaster. If you wanted to design a torture for me, you would have designed this torture. I was completely undone by this mishap.
And in fact, we lived in Hoboken for another 2 years, and I never re-arranged those books, and I lived every day with the frustration of not being able to find what I wanted when I wanted it. With one exception: I restored my "books by friends" shelf. I love that shelf. It contains books by, among others, Pagan Kennedy, Jesse Green, Rupert Kinnard, Julie Zickefoose, Miriam Budner, Stew Albert, Howard Waskow, Heather Woodbury, Anndee Hochman, Ed Goldberg, Andrew Boyd, and Amy Schutzer.
Amy's first novel was Undertow, published by Calyx Press. Her latest is Taking the Scarecrows Down, to be published by Finishing Line Press. (Finishing Line Press could use a better web designer; if you want to find Amy's book, just search the word Scarecrow, and you will eventually find her book, nestled in with all the others.) In between Undertow and Scarecrow, Amy has completed two novels, and is writing her fourth. Her second novel, The Color of Weather, is still unpublished, but was one of four finalists (out of 450) in last year's Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest, judged by Marge Piercy. That's a lot of writing, and not enough publishing, wouldn't you say?
And what does it take to be a wonderful, lyrical, specific, prolific writer in the face of not enough publishing? Many things, I think -- but thing is Patience: Do not aggravate a situation with wasted grief. Amy could get up every day and say, "Screw it." She could choose to dwell on her frustration with the publishing industry. She could let self-doubt creep in. But she doesn't. Instead, she chooses to do what she loves, and what she knows best; she chooses to write, because she is a writer. And writing (and revising and submitting and revising) takes patience, and as I write about it, I realize it also takes Diligence: Always find something to do with your time. And not any old something. Something you care about. Something that's meaningful to you. Like ... writing if you are a writer. No matter how you feel. And if you are excellent at your craft, like Amy and the rest of the people on my "books by friends" shelf are, or even if you're just good at your craft like most of us, then I say, stick with patience and diligence, and keep writing.
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