Waiting
A Writer’s Life: Waiting
Waiting … what’s a writer to do?
In the play Waiting for Godot, two indeterminate characters in a barren landscape with a single little tree wait in futile expectation for a man named Godot. That’s the logline. Godot is probably the most famous no-show in all of literature.
In the course of the play, two other characters arrive, a cruel Pozzo, leading a servile Lucky by a rope around his neck. They soon depart, creating no more than a vaguely threatening diversion among the tedium.
I first saw this play when I was 23, hardly an expert in the futility and meaninglessness of human existence. I was baffled by it, bored by the lack of plot or purpose.
Fifty years later, I was drawn by a local production in a tiny theater, which had scored a rave review from our local critic. This time, the characters were two old women, who seemed to be waiting for some final hurrah in their lives, before the final curtain. Pozzo and Lucky, the two other characters in the play, were much more toned down and subtle in their actions, and the women more visibly distressed. Their sadness affected me, and I could imagine their narratives of disillusionment. I empathized with them, having myself recently suffered a crisis of confidence in my writing ability. I had started writing fiction several years previously, and throughout my writing life had aimed to be a “traditionally published author.” It was one of my most fervent goals. Things hadn’t gone my way.
As I experienced this second Waiting for Godot performance, the words of the women became my words, and their frustration with waiting became my own. The play chewed me up and spat me out. Finding a publisher was a pipe dream, my Godot.
Being a writer with lofty publishing goals is a waiting game. First, you wait for the opinions of your friends and family, who tell you after four weeks or so that they’ve read half of it and it’s fabulous. Then you wait for critiques from people who don’t love you, and they don’t tell you it’s fabulous. Then come the beta readers some of whom never reach the end. so waiting under that little tree can be long.
Act Two: Bring in the agents. Six to eight weeks if you’re lucky. Mostly, waiting for Godot, the wait that goes on to eternity. Then the casual cruelties of rejection, the ‘not for me’ and ‘not compelling’ little knife thrusts. The rope around the neck. The dawning comprehension of your deficiencies as a writer.
Act Three: Submission. You and your agent under the little tree. The return of Pozzo and Lucky. ‘The editors would take it, if only …’
Act Four: The Ninth Circle of Hell of the Next Novel. Waiting … for your muse. Waiting … for your agent to read it. Waiting another few months … for your agent to read it.
Act Five: The agent has departed. Just you and your shadow under the tree. Even your companion has moved on to another play.
As a writer, you have to understand: In Samuel Beckett’s world, Godot never arrives. For a happier outcome, you need a change of theater and a different play.