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Li’l Help? Thanks!

Hypnotist Kevin Hurley performs during Family Weekend in Shults gym.

My Beautiful Wife watches Rocky movies the way old ladies watch the 700  Club.  If one of the six Rocky movies is on cable, channel surfing will cease and desist. She will—WE will watch that goddamn movie from whatever point we pick it up until the credits finish rolling. I love my wife. The Rocky Thing™ is a weird quirk, and she doesn’t have many annoying quirks. If she’d quit parking in the middle of the garage, I’d gladly deal with The Rocky Thing™ and a Sly Stalone franchise to be named later.  I can live with The Rocky Thing™. Mostly. Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t the result of her participating in a hypnosis show back in college.  First, the hypnotist must have convinced her that she was the captain of a sailing ship that must never hit the rocks on either side of the dock. “When I snap my fingers, you will wake and you must watch any Rocky movie you see in it’s entirety and have terrible taste in men and never want sex WAKE!

I admit that from time-to-time, Rocky V has tested the tensile strength of the seamwork in the fabric of our relationship. These are the times a good husband shuts up, stands up, and goes in the other room to fire up the Playstation.

For the past couple of years, The Help and People Like Us have been on the television an inordinate number of times that I’ve walked through the living room. Mainly The Help. I’m the guy who doesn’t like to watch the same movie more than once, and I’ve seen The Help somewhere north of thirty times. Lines from The Help are liberally (pun intended) sprinkled into the common vernacular of Scotsman Manor.

THE HELP

“Minnie don’t burn no chicken.”

“Yo husband gots scaly feet? Crisco.”

“Love and hate are two horns on the same goat, Eugenia. And you need a goat.”

And, most recently imparted to a guy selling magazines: “Get your raggedy ass off my porch!”

Given how ubiquitous the damn movie is in our household, it was a true comfort to read an article by Kathryn Stockett in More magazine about how dehumanizing her query years (that’s right, years) were on the road to finding an agent for The Help.

Kathryn-Stockett-007

Sixty rejections, including some stinging ones. And query number sixty-one was the magic query. This is an encouraging, uplifting moral tale. But the part that is still depressing: Years. Kitty Stockett queried that same damn book for years. Wow. It’s sobering to think how close I came to being able to watch Sportscenter every once in a while. Kind of like the time my dad said, “Hey, if not for a slow night on television, you wouldn’t even be here!”

What would a supportive community of wannabe authors have said to a wannabe Kitty Stockett? “Honey, really. It’s time to move on and write another book.” That would have been a well-meaning and kind intervention. “You gave it your best. Time to move on.”

Right now I’m counting 25 query rejections with two fulls and one partial currently under consideration (and one full and a partial already shot down in flames). In my post 142, I swore I was marching this novel to Bataan. It’s good enough.

But in moments of despair I hear Aibileen whispering, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important. You is going to publish this book.”

Of course, Abileen could say that. She’d been told she was a pretty good writer. Already sold a lot of books.

aibileen_and_hilly_talk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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