Huey Helene Alcaro, author of dystopian novel, “In the Land of Two Legged Women”, writes about The Myth of Sisyphus, the search for a publisher, and the journey of a writer finding her voice, and a home for her book.
Sisyphus and Me
One day I was going though a Small Press Distribution email announcement looking for a publisher for my novel In the Land of Two-Legged Women. Then it hit me—Wait! Stop! I don’t have to do this anymore. I have a publisher!
Looking for a publisher was like brushing my teeth, making coffee every morning, doing Tai Chi. I was somewhat like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain, then watching it roll down. Over and over. I pushed my novel out with hope. Hope went on its way, and then came back. Again and again and again. But I hung in. It was part of my existence. Just something I did to stay alive.
Had I had a Sisyphus-like experience before? Nothing comes to mind. I know rejection and failure but I don’t remember hanging in there after repeated rejection the way I did with this novel. I guess that means it’s important to me. Duh! You spend the time and energy writing a novel, you damned well better think it’s important. But … it’s so easy to let your work languish. Give up on it. I know many fine “writers” who essentially have given up writing. I suppose many don’t because of the fear of creation. See Rollo May’s “The Courage to Create.” But I guess some writers fall by the wayside because what they write isn’t important enough to them to keep putting it out there. So why bother to write? I’ve experienced that with some stories. I know the give-it-up feeling.
However, it appears I’m at the point of thinking why bother to write work to be shared if you’re not going to follow through? That would be like giving birth to a child you’ll abandon. I didn’t abandon Solanj’l, my protagonist, and all her friends. I birthed them and they’re out facing the world. Publicity is not my thing but I’ll help them as much I can. Keep pushing them up the mountain to greater and greater acceptance. And watch them roll back down.
Albert Camus’s essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus” discusses Sisyphus’s relationship with his never ending task. The last sentence is, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Something to Hang Onto
Book Launch
May 25, 2016
Supermarket Restaurant & Bar
268 Augusta Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
I’m standing on a high stage in a black box theater, looking down at the two faces I can see in a room of 80 – 100 people. Intense lights keep me from seeing the entire crowd. A microphone is to the left of my mouth. I’ve thanked Inanna Publications for loving my novel, and specifically thanked Luciana Ricciutelli, Senior Editor, for taking on the job of editing, not part of a Senior Editor’s job. I go on to read the first two chapters and give a brief teaser about the rest of the novel in the hopes people will buy and read it. I step down off the stage, sit and listen to the other women with whom I share this launch.
In a writing workshop taken a few months later the instructor announces we all have an interior space to which we go when we need to get away from something current in our lives. I think, then say, I don’t have such a space. He tells me I’m wrong. I know my statement is true. Once again I resent some man telling me I’m wrong. Snotty little jerk.
Some days later an image comes to me. I am on that stage in Toronto. I belong up there. That is my space. I finally have a place, a Home to go to when hanging on is what I need to do.
— Huey Helene Alcaro, author of In The Land of Two-Legged Women (Inanna, 2016)