This is a story about a bird
Hello, everyone. It's been a while since I've written, and I'll address that, but first I want to tell you a story about a bird.
Specifically, a Blue-headed Vireo. More specifically, a former Blue-headed Vireo, whom I found dead one afternoon last week on my driveway. It must have hit the window. It’s not a gruesome spectacle by any means, so if you don’t think the photo will upset you, click here to see it.
I have always been fascinated by birds. Not the big majestic ones, but the sparrows and chickadees I lump into the category of “parking lot birds.” They are tiny, but they have complete skeletons and nervous systems and they can fly, for cryin’ out loud. Obviously, no living bird will let me get close to it, so when I find a dead one, I like to take my time examining it. Sometimes I’ll spread its wings with a stick, or flip it over to see how its claws are formed, that sort of thing. But with this bird, I wanted more. I wanted its skull.
(Look, I’m a writer and I get to want stuff like this.)
If you look on the internet for best practices for preparing skulls, you will find a head-spinning amount of advice. I preferred to go by what I read about 30 years ago in a Ranger Rick article about a young girl who collected wild animal skulls. Confident in my memory, I headed to the store seeking metal mesh. Finding none, I satisfied myself with an aluminum grill pan full of holes. With a shovel I moved the tiny corpse to a shallow depression on the side of the lawn, lay the pan over it, and weighted the whole thing down with rocks. Observe:
Now bugs and worms could get in, but bigger animals would be thwarted. I had only to wash my hands thoroughly, and wait.
On the third day, I noticed that something had tried to tear a hole in the aluminum, and been thwarted. On the fifth day, I saw that something was most persistent. It had torn not one, but two holes in the foil, and the bird body was nowhere to be found. I was disappointed, but I figured that creature had been hungry, and just wanted it more. But are you ready for the punchline?
Later that evening, my husband informed me that he had actually found the bird’s body that afternoon while he was mowing the lawn. He would have mentioned it sooner, but the body he found was missing its head.
If you see a moral in this story lying around somewhere, don’t hesitate to let me know.
So, what have I been up to? Suffice it to say that publishing, at least for me, has been a static and disappointing enterprise of late. I last sold a piece in August 2022. I’ve heard similar reports from other authors on social media, so I’m not special, but it still sucks. My second book has not sparked any kind of sustained interest from agents. I recently finished a decent draft of a horror novella, so perhaps I will have luck with that. I’m trying not to get my hopes too far up because it is, after all, a novella. No, it doesn’t rhyme.
I have made 57 submissions so far in 2023. I have received 48 rejections and plenty are pending.
And have you heard that some jokers out there think that computers can write just fine?
But as Elaine Stritch sang, I’m still here, and I’m not giving up. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing, including I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt by Madeleine Dore, and Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, by Claire Dederer. I recommend both. Plus, it's less than two months until ReaderCon, where I will be working as a volunteer!
To leave you with a sense of hope and potential, here’s something I discovered on my last walk. The mother flew away when I took out the camera, but she’ll be back. And so will I.
Jessica
JessicaLevai.com