When I was twenty-two, I listened to Rosy and Grey ooze out of Ron Hawkins while I walked aimlessly around Bloor and Bathurst.
I put to Long December on repeat while walking to my babysitting job. It was one of three jobs I worked to pay my rent while I pursued an English degree at York University that I didn't know how I would use.
Everything seemed like an unresolved seventh interval; I was waiting for the resolution but stuck in the dischord. I was also stuck in a relationship that was terrible and gut-wrenching, one that I used the Atlantic Ocean to end because I was too weak to end it myself.
I probably should have anticipated that the discomfort I had as a student surrounded by friends in a city I loved would not be ameliorated by moving to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language and knew no one.
Such is my propensity for angst.
Fast forward twenty-two years. I am forty-four and I remember that time with a curdled nostalgia. My problems now are not bigger - I never worry about how I will make my rent or whether I will make it to the laundry mat before I run out of clothes I can reasonably wear to my teaching practice. I have everything I need and most things that I want. It's the wanting that creates the angst.
The main source of wanting for me is wanting to do it right. What is 'it?' Who knows. It is everything. It is parenting a seventeen-year-old who only randomly sometimes wants to talk to me and who I have to let care more about his grades than I do even though I desperately want him to get into Western at the end of next year.
It is a house where the laundry is never done and the dogs are stinking up the couch and I have watched just enough Chip and Joanna to be keenly aware of all the shortcomings of the decor and the mess and how much better the living room would look with shiplap behind the fireplace. It is the fact that plastic gets sometimes thrown in the garbage instead of the recycling, and the existence of the mice I am sure are eating the Pringles crumbs that the seventeen-year-old leaves in his basement Teen-Cave.
It's easier to make peace with mom-angst than Writer-Angst. Even using the word writer. Can I even call myself that? How many tens of thousands of words earns me that privilege? Who knows.
![Lattes and Love by [Allison, Elizabeth]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41wF9da68oL.jpg)
Currently, Writer Angst is about the fifth draft of a peer-edited manuscript that I can't look at anymore without a break first. Maybe it's still complete rubbish. Who knows? While that mellows or possibly ferments in Drop Box, I am slowly building a spreadsheet of agents who might be interested, pulling their information from Writers Market and their websites. Writers Market could have charged me three hundred dollars annually instead of thirty. They are missing out on the economy of the desperate.
There are agencies who clearly are not the right fit. That's an easy problem. Then there are agencies where one agent seems to be a decent fit. Still okay. The worst and most gut-wrenching are the agencies where there are three or four agents all 'seeking Romance.' Once as many as five. Then the process becomes a detail-focused combing over of each agent's #mswl and Publishers Marketplace offerings, and their Twitter feed. After there is no more empirical evidence and I have rubbed my eyes and destroyed the makeup that has already served its purpose after the work day, I ask my churning gut for an answer and listen to what it says.
Coming soon to an aspiring author near you, the angst of having actually finished the spreadsheet and going back through the list, checking out every agent's Manuscript Wish List page and making more notes. Then one more consultation with the reviewers, and one more pass over the draft. After all the parts I can control will come the most Adam Duritz part of all, writing the query letters and hitting send.
Writer Angst is a privileged one and it keeps me on this laptop instead of watching Office reruns all weekend. At some point, I am determined to hear that chord resolve.
