Yes!

Pancakes are easy. You can whip them up in no time at all with a minimum of ingredients and a little elbow grease, and the response you get is so gratifying.

On Sunday, we had no bread in the house, but we did have a dozen eggs, flour, and a liter of sour milk, courtesy of certain family members who can never remember to put the milk back in the fridge. We also had a house full of teenagers, mainly boys, one of whom was already sitting at the table. Pancakes are always better with sour milk. "Want pancakes?" I asked. He said yes.

What a great word yes is. We don't hear it enough in the right context.

So I cracked half a dozen eggs into a bowl and whipped them into a froth after adding some sugar. I chucked in my sour milk and whipped it into the eggs and sugar, then added a few spoonfuls of oil and whipped that in too. Another boy came into the room and sat down. "I'm making pancakes," I told him. "Want some?"

"Yes."

That wonderful word again!

I chucked in a few cups of flour and half a cup of wheat germ, and I beat all of that in.

"Do you want any help?" one of the boys asked, scraping back his chair.

"Yes," I told him. "Keep me amused with your teenage wit."

The boys obliged me.

I peeled and grated some cooking apples and put them in a saucepan with some blueberries we've had in the fridge for a week or so, still good, but looking a bit neglected. While I shaved lemon peel into the pot and added sugar, more teenagers filled the room. They sat at the table and looked expectant.

"Everybody want pancakes?" I asked.

There was only one no and a whole chorus of yeses. Boy, I love the word yes.

So I warmed a stack of plates and added a dash of cinnamon to my pancake batter. I spooned a dollop of batter into my hot skillet and tilted the pan just so until bubbles formed, then I flipped it over and cooked the other side until it too was golden brown. I stacked up pancakes and poured the blueberry and apple syrup into a pitcher.

I served up plate after plate of pancakes, and every time I asked if anybody wanted any more, I got another yes. It was so beautiful I could have wept. Want some more pancakes? I would ask, or Can anybody manage more blueberry syrup? And the answer would be yes. Not just yes, in fact, but Yes, please! and Yes, I can! or even Me please! I've only had two and he's already had five! When I ran out of pancake batter and blueberry syrup, it was all over, but for a while there, it was pure poetry. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. What a great word. More encouraging than Maybe. And infinitely more inspiring and less discouraging than Sorry, but no.

Cooking pancakes for teenagers is highly gratifying. Writing for them is even more gratifying, you just get fewer yeses.

Perfect Submission

This is a post just for my writing pals who have been trying to get published. If you aren't a writer, this won't make a lick of sense. If you are a writer but haven't been trying to get published, this still won't make sense. I wouldn't have gotten this at all a few years back myself; I had no idea what a long, hard business it was to write, submit, be rejected -- and repeat the whole process ad nauseam, week after week, month after month, year after year.

My writing pals will also know that this really isn't the done thing. Nothing spells total beginner like a long, whiny post about how good you are and what an unfair thing it is that nobody in the publishing world understands your genius. But I figured I could get away with this if I turned it into a verse and didn't name any names.

There is something else I'm doing here too. Although we writers are discouraged from broadcasting our many rejections and failures, for me these are like a badge of honor, the road to eventual success, and referring to them this way is like a murmuring a shibboleth: reading this, other writers will instantly know I've trod the same roads they've trod. Maybe I am making a virtue of a necessity here (who knows if I will ever get a novel published, after all?), but it seems odd to keep quiet about what we do and how we do it when it is so extraordinary. Not the fact that we write or what we write, but the fact that we do it, get serially rejected, and go right back out there and do it again until somebody cracks and takes us on. This isn't whining, it's bragging.

So here you are, my fellow would-be published writers. This may make you smile. And if you're like me, you'll probably need it.

Perfect Submission

I sealed it in an envelope
--pristine, professional,
Times New Roman, SASE enclosed--
addressed to A.
A read my work with interest but
did not accept the principal
and sent it back.

Through cyberspace it went to B
B did not fall in love
(And yet her love I did not seek—
I yearned for mere acceptance)—still
I sent it out again, this time to C.
C passed it all around, she said
and really liked the premise but
somehow it did not click.

So out it went again
to D, E, F, G, H.
I waited days—weeks—months to find
that it intrigued (but not so much);
the middle sagged, the plot confused.
I nipped and tucked and rearranged--
—-and off it went, pasted, attached—
to I, to J, to K – and they
were not compelled, and told me so
(in many different ways).

So, long and hard, I sized it up --
revised it till it fairly shone.
And tightened, trimmed, and beta-read,
my darlings lay cold in the ground
when out it went again, this time
to L and M
and N and O
and P and Q until—
—it made me dizzy and
they all read it with interest but
were sorry it was not for them;
they did not fall in love, they said
they felt no passion and
enjoyed it but
they did not feel that it was right
they could not use it and
were forced to pass because
it did not meet their needs
or fit their list
and they were not compelled;
regrettably it did not click
they liked the voice and yet
it did not match their visions.

Oh, I may never reach
perfect submission but
like moth to flame, with stubborn will
Again and yet again
I must submit—I will submit—
to R, S, T, U, V
until the very…
...Zzzzz