Get Up. Fall Down. Get Up Again.

I will admit that I, too, thought "The master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted" was a Chinese proverb. Apparently not – most sources give Stephen McCranie, the comic book artist, credit. Regardless, it's my favorite aphorism and at this point I've probably said it more times than McCranie.

Because I fail a lot.

When I was young, I dreamed of being a lab researcher, but a stint at the National Institutes of Health put paid to that.

I still cringe when I think of the way chimpanzees were housed in tiny crates in the labs, how experiments were scrapped and living animals "sacrificed" by the scores because the scientists wanted to attend a wedding or hit the slopes.

It would have been a dream job for some – I reported directly to two Nobel Laureates. But I was miserable and gave up my plans for a career in science.

I modeled for a time and I was terrible at it. I had the height but not the élan. I couldn't wear contact lenses so I had to whip my thick glasses on and off continually for pictures. I was clumsy in heels and once stepped right off a runway. Oops.

Acting was fun and I was good at it. So were a thousand other young actors with thicker hides than mine. Failed again.

I was doing pretty well as a soft-news journalist. I wrote a snarky and very popular column for Buzz, then a hot new magazine billed as "the talk of Los Angeles." I covered parties for InStyle and scandals for Redbook and the other "seven sisters" magazines.

Then I stepped away for a hot minute to have a baby and when I was ready to get back to work, the editors who had once supplied me with a steady stream of assignments had moved on. Nobody knew my name. Failed again.

My first novel was a chapter book for kids published by Bantam Skylark. The acquiring editor left the house before Dog Magic came out. Death knell. Same for my next two books, one horror and one suspense, both from a major house, and both "orphaned" before their debuts.

When a book is orphaned, there's no one at the publishing house to schmooze buyers at book fairs, treat drinks, and fight for you to get reviews. They save those efforts for their own discoveries, for understandable reasons. The results were predictable. There's that F word again.

I abandoned writing and decided to become a teacher. With no credential and no training, I landed a job at at a yeshiva, then segued that into a spot at a top independent school. Then another. After classes, I worked on a young adult novel I called Big and Bad and How I Got My Life! Back. That book was so damned good. I knew it would be a hit and I would join the ranks of superstar YA authors John Greene and Laurie Halse Anderson. I sent Big and Bad off to one publisher, who rejected it. Then I tossed it in a drawer and sulked for the next fourteen years. Not kidding.

One day I came across the manuscript on my hard drive, read it, and liked it a lot. I polished it up and shipped it off to a contest sponsored by Texas Review Press. Big and Bad came in second but they published it anyway, and the following year it won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Big and Bad got a rave review in School Library Journal, which is the go-to nearly all schools and libraries consult when stocking their shelves. Shoulda been a contender - but that dang pandemic thing got in the way. Since you're all writers, I don't need to explain. No stock, no ship, no shelf, no sale.

So. Teaching. I love teaching and I love kids. I don't love schools and I can barely abide administrators. I've been fired from more schools than some states have in their school system. In fact I've been fired from almost every job I've ever held, although a couple of times I managed to squeak out a quick I quit before they could lower the axe.

So you're picking up a theme here, right? Failure after failure, sometimes my fault, sometimes just the way the cards were dealt. But every single failure taught me something. Lots of things, actually, and I use all of those things in writing fiction and poetry.

When I was a kid, my sister and I would fight over Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock when they arrived each month. (Yeah, it was a long time ago - they were both still monthlies!) I can truly claim to be a life-long fan, but it didn't occur to me to try selling a story to Ellery Queen until I was sixty years old. Sixty! According to Guardian Life Insurance, the average American retires at sixty-two - and here I was trying something brand-spanking new. Scary!

Janet Hutchings rejected my story, of course - it was all wrong for Ellery Queen. She rejected the next one, too, but then she bought Krikon the Ghoul Hunter, and then a whole bunch more.

My stories from Ellery Queen have been recorded in podcasts, nominated for awards, given prizes, published as a collection, and selected for "Best Ofs." And of course I publish elsewhere, too - sometimes in the strangest places. I've published a poem in Fungi Magazine (yes, all about mushrooms!) and a story I wrote for The Saturday Evening Post is part of the national high school curriculum of Fiji. Yep. The island nation. Don't ask. I'm just grateful.

It's a crazy writing life, this one. Some mystery writers my age have been publishing short stories for fifty years, not seven years. I'm kind of a newbie. My heart still beats fast when Jackie Sherbow tells me she'll take a story for EQMM, or when an editor asks me to write a story for an anthology, or a literary journal picks up a poem, or a university professor tells me he's teaching one of my poems or stories. I still sulk when a piece gets turned down, and I have cried more than a few late-night tears over rejections from editors I thought adored me.

I'm still trying, and I'm still failing. I've failed a lot.

And I've succeeded a lot, too.

Because that's the only way to get anywhere in this world. Try, and fail. Then try and fail again. Because the master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted.

Giving voice to cartoon passion.

I was once asked, “If you hadn’t been a writer, what would you rather be?” 

This is the wrong question.  It should be, if a genie popped out of a can of Dinty More Stew, and said, “Pick any job you want, you just can’t be a writer.”  I have the answer.  Two, actually.

Number one:  A New Yorker Cartoonist.  To me, there’s no higher form of art.  I subscribe to the digital New Yorker Magazine mostly to read the cartoons.  The articles, often quite informative and engaging, are an afterthought.  In a single frame, these artists contain vast stores of wisdom, insight and belly laughs, exquisitely composed and pitch perfect.  I know success in this arena is the result of gigantic effort and stress-filled anticipation as their cartoon editorial overlords judge their submissions, so that doesn’t feel much different from my past professional life, but oh the joy of making it to the inner circle.  I assume the genie can arrange this, so that’s my decision.

I once met the late Jack Zeigler, a renowned New Yorker cartoonist, a friend of a friend, and he seemed quite happy with his lot in life. I’ve been trying to keep the envy in check ever since. 

Job number two:  Having a long career in advertising, I worked with a lot of voice over professionals.  The successful ones, men and women, had the best lives imaginable.  They always showed up at the studio wearing tailored clothes and carrying expensive briefcases they never opened.  They often lived in Upstate New York or Connecticut, and had faces free of stress lines and voices bestowed by the gods.   

I’d settle behind the glass and they’d sit on a stool wearing earphones and read the copy I’d written, usually perfect the first time.  The engineers and I would sigh with pleasure over those silken, exquisitely delivered performances.  I’d make them do a few more takes, just because I could, and each one got better.  I’d say thank you, they’d come into the recording area, we’d shake hands, and they’d stroll away after signing the SAG forms, having made a huge chunk of money for about a half hour’s work, if you can call it that. 

I always thought to myself, I want to be one of those people. 

These days, they don’t even have to leave their homes in the Cotswold’s or Outer Mongolia, since we’re all wired through the Internet, and they can easily afford top drawer home recording studios. 

To be fair, most voice over artists struggle in the beginning like everyone else, trying to get gigs and building a promotable portfolio. And the really successful ones not only have a great set of pipes, but have learned how to speed up and slow down with no loss of timber or enunciation, hitting the time mark at the exact second.  This is a real talent, and like any virtuoso, deserving of reward. 

I’m glad I became a writer, no regrets.  I find the formation of sentences and paragraphs soothing and addictive.  It’s a complicated task, never fully mastered, like sailing, which I’ve also enjoyed.  But remember, there’s a genie involved here who’s demanding I swap my life’s work for something else, and I get to choose what. 

Maybe we could compromise.  Cartoon caption writer?