Payoff

“Making Room for Mr. Right” will arrive at its rightful (read: hoped-for) home after a year-and-a-half-long journey: The Boston Globe Magazine’s “Coupling” column, Sunday, February 22.

As Ed Grimley, the SNL character played by Martin Short, would say, I couldn’t be more excited!

“Making Room” is an essay I wrote about my semi-disastrous experience buying a dual-control dial-a-number bed in the hopes of someday sharing it, only to find that it doesn’t work with only one body. I visualized the piece in “Coupling” before I even wrote it: layout, illustration, byline, the whole nine. So I whipped it out, polished it up, and sent it off, in July 2007. Silence. After a few months, I wrote a friendly follow-up query. Nothing. Nada. Niente.

In November, I opened my Sunday Globe and turned, as always, to the column. Lo and behold, a bed essay written by a widow who was adjusting to her newly mateless mattress. My heart sank. What would be the chances of their running a second bed essay? Slim to nada.

Two months later, I got a nice note from the editor, who said she liked my piece but couldn’t use it because, yeah, they’d already published a bed essay. I tried a few more possibilities but they all felt wrong, and were rejected. “Making Room” belonged in “Coupling.”

That was a year ago. The essay collected dust, or its cyber equivalent, among other things languishing in My Documents, while I focused on other stuff. You know how that goes, oh creative friends. Then, after taking Michelle Seaton’s “Six Weeks, Six Essays” class through Grub Street in the fall, my essay engines got revved. Cranking, writing, thinking, workshopping, polishing, sharing with my 11 amazing classmates.

Some of us formed a post-class writing group—my haven and sanctuary. I love nothing more than hanging with wordsmiths who care about everything from tone and voice to semicolons and parentheses. So I brought “Making Room” to them and, with their help, reworked it to perfection.

This Thursday, I sent it back to the “Coupling” editor with a note reminding her of our correspondence a year ago, wondering if enough time had passed to run my baby. I figured I’d wait another six months, maybe, to hear back. But she wrote right back with a YES.

After some disappointing rejections recently, I seriously had to reread her email before it sank in. Yes! What a lovely word. Yes! She asked me to expand the ending, adding more of a “take-away.” Fifty words’ worth. I'd written 700. She wanted 750. A daunting task, having tweaked the thing to oblivion by now. But what the editor wants, the editor gets. I submitted the new version yesterday, after my friend Susan gave it the Good-Friend-Available-at-the-Last-Second Stamp of Approval.

It’s a go. I get to approve a PDF of the designed page next week. Will the illustrator’s vision match mine? Can’t wait!

Wait. What am I doing? I’m going public, way public, with my singlehood, my sleep habits, my fantasies of sharing my bed with a man. Who would be reading this? My family? OK. Friends? OK. Clients? Eeks. Prospective employers? Hmm. Weirdos? Uh oh. As self-disclosure goes, my work ranks in the PG realm. Given our open-book (and open-everything-else) culture, though, I guess I’m cool.

This is who I am. I write personal essays. I divulge personal information. I am a writer. And it’s so nice to get the payoff!

Cherry on Top: Also on Thursday, I found out I’m going to be profiled on Skirt! Boston magazine’s “24/7” page. Another yes! The Boston editor likes my new skirt.com blog and wanted to know about Mortified. One thing led to another, and we're meeting next week.

I haven’t even digested that news yet, so I’ll leave it aside for now, a big chunk of positive, incredible, heavenly, and fun validation to savor, confirmation that following my heart is the answer. Yes it is.