I am in the final (I think) phases of writing my novel, My Stray Guru. I am not sure how long I have been working on it. But I like to tell people that I am a writer and a failed novelist. This will be my fourth novel manuscript. Each one takes about 5- 10 years to write. I have come very close to getting one of them published. I have been hopeful and despondent. I have felt scared and brave. I have been angry and found laughter the best cure to existential despair.
The best moment of the process is when I am in the middle of it. When I have the book roughed out and I can write each day. I have a place to go and I can enjoy getting there. Nothing is better than that.
Beginning is brutal. Ending is equally hard. Today when I came to my desk I did not know what to do. I have to begin now the pitch, the sell, the search for someone to publish it and get it out there.
So I worked on my pitch. Here it is:
What happens when a guru you met briefly in your youth, shows up on your doorstep twenty years later? Sarah, a middle-aged veterinarian and single mom, met a Buddhist monk on her Junior year abroad in college, now he wants to move in with her, go to the movies, drive a car, eat bacon and have sex. In this comic novel, Baba, the monk-gone-wild, forces Sarah to re-examine her relationships with clients, pets, ex-lovers, colleagues and children. The novel is also a love story that explores the deep relationships we have with our pets contrasted against the disappointments we often feel with each other in our search for love and meaning.