Dear Mr. McAgent,

I apologize for the following unprofessional and inappropriate note.

Yesterday I queried you for a literary fiction novel. After hitting ‘submit,’ I ate a salad, took a ten-minute nap, and when I returned to my computer, your rejection email was there waiting for me. While I appreciate your efficiency and your reply (so many agents don’t) the speed of the rejection was demoralizing.

Of course you owe us struggling writers nothing, but here is my plea: Give us time to hope. Let us think that maybe you’re mulling it over. Sending a query is like buying a lottery ticket. You know the odds but until the numbers are drawn, you dream.

Maybe wait a day, or at least a full afternoon, before sending the dream-crushing bad news. Not knowing isn’t always the worst thing.

Sincerely,

Jenifer Adams-Mitchell

(I didn’t send this. Probably because, smartly, he doesn’t list his email or mailing address. Thank god!)

From BuggFeed.news

by Laura Longlegs

Seven days ago master web-designer, Sam Spyder, lost his footing while working on a high-altitude project and fell into what he described as “a steep, smooth sinkhole plagued by violent flash floods which drained into silver-lined bottomless hole.” 

“Sometimes I get so lost in my design that I forget to attach my safety silks,” said Spyder. “It’s a bad habit.”

With no injuries from the fall, Spyder immediately tried to climb out of the sinkhole. “I’ve never experienced a surface that smooth. It was crazy,” he said. “The incline got steeper and steeper. I could see the edge. I was so close. But then I lost my grip and slid all the way back down.”

Again and again he tried—different routes, different angles—always with the same result: a helpless slide back down to the bottom. Near exhaustion, he reconsidered his situation. Could he design a web here? Could he figure out how to get his silk to stick to this surface? Would any insects venture down here? But as soon as he began dreaming up his next creation, everything around him changed.

“It got really bright. Something huge loomed above me. I cowered near the edge of the silver hole, trying to hide.” 

Then came the flood. 

“The water fell from above in a big, fat stream,” said Spyder. 

The force of it pinned him to the bottom and then swept him to the side. Pedaling his legs he gained a purchase on the wall and, with renewed energy, scrambled up the incline. He had to make it this time—his life depended on it. Up, up, almost there…. “But I just wasn’t strong enough.”

With no hope and no fight left, Spyder slid towards the flood water. No more webs to dream up, no more anticipation as a moth flew closer and closer. And the moment the silk caught and held? Well, the meal paled in comparison. 

Now he wished more than anything for eyelids so he wouldn’t have to see the end. But right before he slipped down the hole, the water stopped. Silence. Then he felt something firm underneath him, lifting him up. Not trusting it at first, he tried to get away. But he was so tired. It pushed him up the smooth surface of the sinkhole. He saw the edge. Then he was over the edge—finally out! Yet it didn’t stop there. He clung to it now and felt himself being lowered, then deposited in a dark, quiet corner—a perfect place to regain his strength. 

“It all happened so fast,” Spyder said. “I thought I was going to die and then I was safe again.”

When asked what saved him Spyder paused and turned his eight eyes skyward. “I don’t know. It was a force of some sort, something much bigger than me. I felt it. I know I didn’t do this myself.” 

(This piece of investigative journalism is the product of a prompt in the Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild newsletter: Write what you did on Sept. 24th.)

I wake early most mornings. The cat bites my ankles as I stumble to the bathroom. The dog shakes and stretches and then sprints to her outdoor pen. After I feed them, one curls up, guarding the closed bedroom door behind which my husband sleeps on, and the other sits in a windowsill, tail flicking as he focuses on a tiny movement in the blackness of our yard. Everything is once again quiet.

We don’t have children so the house, in activity terms anyway, is never chaotic. But when my husband gets up the TV comes on. And we have our own business which, for seven months, is a needy, unmedicated ADHD child. So it is early or nothing.

Once season winds down, my husband says, “Why don’t you sleep in one morning? You need to take a day off. From writing, too.”

He sees my frustrations. How I struggle with a paragraph, a sentence, a word. So of course it looks like work. Unpaid, unnoticed – really, what’s the point?

But when I don’t write, or at least sit for an hour or so staring at a blank page or a mean-spirited blinking cursor, the day feels incomplete, wasted. Why in the world does this type of torture make me feel hopeful? I have absolutely no idea. But if I keep writing, I’ll find the answer.

Yikes! It was my turn to be the leader for the Free Write this past Friday. So, you’d think I would have had my own pieces kind of already set in my mind. But that was not the case. I was a little too nervous. I don’t know why – this is the nicest group of people you could ask for. Anyway, the prompt was, “The longest night…” in honor of winter solstice.

They were exhausted when they got to the campsite having raced the stealth-looking canoers for one of the few campsites on the lake. They were very happy to see the raised lean-to meaning they wouldn’t have to pitch their tent – just roll their sleeping pads and bags out on top of the wood plank floor.

Late fall, the night came on quickly. After a pot of mush cooked on top of the tiny propane burner that tasted gourmet to growling stomachs and finishing off a flask of wine, they were ready to turn in.

As the night wore on, the wood planks felt harder and harder against hips and ribs and knees. The wind came up. The moon disappeared and then reappeared over and over. Then in a moment of bright moonlight a bear appeared waving its arms wildly. They closed their eyes and opened them. It was gone. But no. There it was again.

Exhaustion finally brought uneasy sleep. In the morning the bear was still there, waiting. Their rain coats hanging on a tree waved hello in the morning breeze.

The prompts this week were from snippets of songs our leader had heard in half-sleep at two in the morning while recovering from knee surgery (they were eclectic!). The prompt for my attempt was, “The enemy of fear is love.”

     So many things to fear – getting on an airplane for the first time, renting a car, following directions through a strange city, then out into a strange countryside. She lived on a farm. She’d emailed him photos – selfies with a cow, a llama. He’d never been around animals before. And did he bring the right clothes? What to wear to help with chores yet impress this strange, beautiful woman? But if it worked out, if she felt for him what he’d grown to feel for her, it was worth it.