Rant #2,870: Everyday I Write the Book

Just about two years ago, right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic and during the height of my unemployment, I finished a project that took me several months to complete.
 
During probably the most desperate time in my life, I wrote a 36,000-word novel, which I called “Rat Face: The Strange Tale of Abraham Lincoln Panim,” and I guess if for nothing else, it kept me going—and hoping—during this absolutely horrid time of my life.
 
The story is about someone born with everything going against him, and then one day, everything goes the right way for him … or so he thinks.
 
He takes advantage of his new situation, and he finds out that even though things have changed so much for him, he is perhaps worse off than he was when things were so bad for him.
 
I worked on it a few days a week, and I pretty much made it all up as I went along, but I know that I thought about it, and what I wanted to do with it, all the time.
 
I finished it in August 2020, and then, during the real height of the pandemic, I tried to push it to publishers as a fantasy novel for young teens.
 
I sent it out to probably a dozen publishers, even entered it into a writing competition, but quite frankly, that was not the time for a new author like me to break through.
 
And I kind of knew it, but I tried, tried and I tried again.
 
With absolutely nothing happening with the novel—I do remember that two publishers liked “parts of it,” in their words, but would not take a chance on it in full--I put it up on the Internet, and it still can be accessed at https://ratfaceabrahamlincolnpanim.blogspot.com/
 
And there it sits.
 
After trying to push it to publishers to no avail, I simply decided that I had had enough, and in fact, today is the first day that I have even looked at this thing in nearly two years.
 
If nothing else, I proved to myself that I have the discipline to do such a project, and while the novel isn’t perfect, it is what it is, and I am proud of it, even if it never sees the light of day as a real, published novel.
 
I have thought about self publishing, but right now, even that is on the back burner, but the thought does go through my brain every now and again.
 
But at least I actually did it, and most importantly, it allowed me, for a few hours a week, to not think of my plight at the time, which was as dreary as a cold, wet day is.
 
The only reason that I am talking about my novel today is that I just happened to see my file of it on my computer, and I just opened it up, and it brought back a lot or memories of that horrid time.
 
Remember, we were all on relative lockdown at that time, we had no “vaccines” or whatever you want to call it to combat the coronavirus, and everything—and I do mean everything—was so up in the air about that current time and even about our future as a civilization.
 
The shots would come a few months later, but in August 2020, we were in “nowheresville” with this virus, and our situation was dire at best.
 
Fast forward nearly two years, and while we are still dealing with the virus. I think we can all agree that its darkest days are over.
 
It still exists in variant forms, but we have the tools to fight it tooth and nail now, and generally, if one gets the virus, with the proper inoculations and treatment, most people get over lit as quickly as they get over the flu, maybe a week away from everything and then they are good as new.
 
I think that the panic phase of this thing is over, although some would have us be in constant panic and paranoia even to this day.
 
So when I opened up the file to my novel after all this time, it really brought me back to a time of real angst, for myself, my family and quite frankly, for all of us worldwide as a civilization.
 
Hopefully, we never have to be in the throes of such a thing ever again, and while things are far from perfect now in our world, they are better than they were back then … to a point.
 
Now, not only do we still have to deal with this virus, there is a war in Europe which is very troubling, to say the least.
 
We fought one type of war—against the virus—and now there is another type of war festering in Europe that is not going away very soon, unfortunately.
 
I also look at my personal situation today, and while again it isn’t perfect, I have to day it is better than it was nearly two years ago.
 
I was forced to retire early, or more to the point, I had to semi-retire, as at the last second, I was hired to write and edit material on a freelance basis, so I am not fully retired, per se.

Maybe tarnished, but far from broken.
 
My son was also out of work during this period, and he is now working, and has been, for several months.

My wife got through the pandemic working in a bank, got through it even though many of her cohorts became infected, and she decided to retire on her own unlike her husband.
 
So things are better.
 
But all told, I guess I will have that novel to remind me of where I was, where I am now, and maybe even where I am going in the future.

And you can put "we" in that statement in place of "I," because even though we might be at each others' throats for one thing or another, whether we like it or not, "we" are all in this together.
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.