Beth is free! Temporarily.

Momentous. I'm sitting here listening to Randy Bachman, feeling somehow empty and exhilarated at the same time. I just emailed the memoir manuscript to the editor who'd expressed an interest in seeing it.

It was just too absurd and difficult to be dealing with this currently catastrophic renovation, still issues with my aunt's estate, everything else, and trying to write too. My office is nearly uninhabitable, and so is the house; it was time to push the thing out. So, after many weeks of work already, I spent the whole weekend on the manuscript, sitting here till the bum fell asleep, as usual. And finally, with trembling hand and heart, I just hit Send.

I am sure - yes, I'm sure - that it's not right for this editor of a big, majorly prestigious mainstream publishing house. But I hope that she'll perhaps help to steer me to the right place. And in the meantime, I can celebrate New Year's Eve without my beloved millstone.

Here is the blurb I sent: 

Loose Woman continues the tradition of Eat Pray Love and Wild, in which a lost young woman sets out to discover the world and finds herself. It’s a celebration of the miracle of Jean Vanier’s humanitarian creation L’Arche - the Ark - which now comprises 147 communities in 35 countries on 5 continents, where men and women with intellectual disabilities live and work with assistants who are not disabled. It explores in depth the intense, nomadic, feast-or-famine life of the theatre. 

As well, the memoir tells a coming-of-age story set in a precise time and place: the western world at the end of the seventies, as feminism and the sexual revolution turn social mores upside down and cocaine is everywhere, and yet a fiercely single feminist realizes just how much she wants a child.

The book illustrates how, with the help of six damaged men, a gifted, insecure, damaged young actress searching for an authentic inner life learns to trust and forgive herself and thus, at last, to accept the love of others. 

Would you buy this book? Keep your fingers crossed for me, friends. 

From my past life, a student just wrote: 
Just busting at the seams to tell you that The Globe and Mail's "First Person" has accepted my submission. Wow, happy happy is me. Thank you for your critique which was a huge help !!! Would have never happened had I not taken your course. 

Last night, I watched a lovely doc, "You are here: the making of Come From Away," about 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, the incredible generosity and hard work of a small community inundated with thousands of travellers from around the world, grounded by the disaster in NYC. Many tears, of course - at the end, the real heroes from Newfoundland there in New York for the opening of the musical, on stage, being applauded by New Yorkers - what a story. And in the commercials, I turned over to TCM which was showing "A Hard Day's Night." Gosh, those boys have talent. Hope they go far. 

Before that, dear Ken came to take me out to dinner, but we ended up staying here and eating Christmas leftovers. Delicious. 

Tomorrow, work on the house begins again, and we sort out where we are in my skeletal home. I can focus on it now. I AM FREE!

My daughter posted this on FB, telling her brother this sounded like me. Misty eyes.