Fairy Tales for Writers:
The Princess and the Pea
© June 2007 Lawrence Schimel
A Midsummer Night Press
[Image: "Woman In Blue" by Joseph Vermeer (1663)]

The writing life is full of tests of authenticity,
like variations on a theme, a repeated refrain
of having to prove oneself time and again:

Sleepless nights as an undergraduate, searching for
that kernel of truth among the mountains of paper,
that essential key to prove the thesis of her essay.

Beginning to submit her work and, as she opens
each SASE, feeling each form rejection like a physical
blow strong enough to leave her black and blue.

Those red marks on the pages of her manuscript
that leave her tossing and turning all night:
would she be able to do the rewrite the editor wanted?

How confusing it often seems, as the emotional
pendulum swings between the artist's sensitivity
and receptiveness to the world and the thick-skinned

toughness of the shrewd businesswoman.
But for the writer able to endure the recurring
onslaught of apprehension and self-doubts,

there come those mornings of confirmation:
the call from an editor or agent, a contract,
a royalty check, a byline, a fan letter.

Lawrence Schimel is an author and anthologist, working in many different genres and forms. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals — including The Wall Street Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, The Boston Phoenix, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Physics Today, and others — and in more than 140 anthologies including The Random House Book of Science Fiction Stories, Best Gay Erotica 1997 and 1998, The Mammoth Book of Fairy Tales, Black Thorn, White Rose, The Sandman Book of Dreams, Weird Tales from Shakespeare, Gay Love Poetry, and The Random House Treasury of Light Verse. He is a regular lecturer at Princeton University, Yale University, Brown University, Rutgers University, and Wayne State University. His most recent work, Fairy Tales for Writers, will be released in June 2007.

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