The Paths We Choose

[edsiejka]

The Paths We Choose
by Edmund Siejka

When I was a young writer
I read all the greats
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Yeats, James Joyce
And so on
I could write like them I said
So I felt good about myself
And wrote a play
In the heat of August, 1976.

Beating the lines on an old portable typewriter,
Rubber mat placed under its steel frame,
To keep from annoying the neighbors
But the walls in the East Village were thin
And next door guessed
What are you doing writing a novel?
She asked
I kept typing
And the rejections piled up
It was then I realized that I was attempting the near impossible
So I stopped.

Something came over me
I started writing again in 1992
Two unpublished novels
And inevitably
The mailman would trudge up the front steps
Lips pursed in a tight, thin line
Rejections coming in like a winter storm
I poured over each one trying to decipher their true meaning
But it was no use.

I wrote a poem in 2009
To my surprise it was accepted
Followed by an email from the editor
Requesting more of my “stuff”.

Someone recommended that I give a reading
At a local library
Start small they advised.

And so I found myself
In a crowded room of poets and strangers
When my name was finally called
I approached the podium
Determined and focused.

After reading my piece
I searched
The audience for their reaction
Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[dune]

Thirty-plus years of persistence! When it's in your blood, it's in your blood. Maybe it just never really leaves you.

I have one unpublished novel myself (greatly expanded from something I self-published a few years ago-- thanks Doreen), and half of another one. Been at it for ten years or so...

[revolutionR]

Wrote poetry and read on open mics for many years before attempting a novel, but I think I wrote the novel/memoir too late it's like if Kerouac wrote On the Road in the 60's. I wrote my 60's thing in the 2000's on a computer, not a typewriter, somehow the magic was lost. My novel is a flawed gem about my teenage experience of the late sixties, it describes my experience of psychedelic times, from the point of view of a poet in the future, I was very influenced by Burroughs description of drugs, I just wanted to tell my story of what it felt like
as a teenager when the music became psychedelic and how the lyrics of Dylan floated in and out of that, Hendrix too. I liked your poem it captures that typewriter thing.