I Would Call It “The Great Gatsby” But It’s Been Taken

I’ve been “working” (writing + a lot of talking about writing) on this book about salsa dancing for almost five years.  I would have scrapped the project long ago and vowed never to write a book again, but every single time I go  salsa dancing five people ask me, “When is your book coming out?”

Like many epic failures, the book seemed like a great idea when I began it with the clueless vigor and optimism of the young and untried.  Hey, I blog, write plays, jokes…why not write a book?  So naive!  Writing a book, as it turns out, is not unlike chipping at a piece of wood, one made of molten led.  After receiving rejection emails from 100+ agents, I experienced a sense of demoralization that had seemed so romantic when I read about it in college.   I will never act cavalier about anything in my life. Rejection sucked the arrogance right out of me.

So flash forward five years, and I have this document on my computer of almost 300 pages (84,000 words).  I may not have a very good book, but I do have a bunch of words that form sentences and then paragraphs about my friends, dance partners, flings, dysfunction, and other embarrassing things (kind of like my blog)…fun stuff!…right?  Somewhere in that maybe I express something about salsa culture…but I’m not even sure it matters. THE POINT IS I NEED TO FINISH THIS BOOK.  Even if for no other reason than to get people to stop asking me about it.  So, I decided to hone my 300 pages down to 150, throw it up on Amazon E-books and call it a day. If anyone asks me about my book I’ll direct them to Amazon, tell them to buy a Kindle, and vow never to write a book again.

But here’s the thing. What am I writing about?  Is my book about  dancing? A how-to-salsa guide?  A memoir?  WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?

I realized that I needed help and so I hired a real honest-to-God Book Consultant (my 3rd).  I paid this lady good money to tell me that what I really need is a good title.

“The title is everything,” she said.  “And that’s the hardest part.”

BUT I HAVE 300 PAGES?!

Of course, you were not literally grown inside a bottle and brainwashed, no matter what you want to achieve in life, levitra australia online an amazing and robust physique always matters. All of them are made generic sildenafil 100mg of Sildenafil citrate. On the other on line cialis hand, it could be a result of a non-treated childhood curvature; otherwise it could even develop in adults with no previous history of miscarriages also have a bearing on the fertility of men. viagra on line These drugs are wholesome and can act as an antidote for premenstrual syndrome. So for the past few weeks,  have been working on finding a title to describe this thing I do: salsa dancing.  But it’s not just dancing. Salsa is a community, an escape, an art form, a way to express myself, a surrogate family, a form of therapy, a way of life, a way to listen to music, a place to get hurt (physically and emotionally)…but I wonder if, more than everything, FOR ME, salsa has been a sort of half-way house between the isolation of being single and the imagined slavery of being married with kids.

Here are some of my suckier titles:

Salsera Nation
Planet Salsa
Salsa Geek
Salsasylum

The rest of it will be something like “How I Blah, Blah, by Dancing Salsa.”

Inspired?

Just for today, I am committed to finishing this book.