William Myrl; Letters to No One (18)

Dear No One,

Sometimes, days are just drawing.

They're moving some dirt around on the rec yard, so we couldn't go outside this morning. I worked on a portrait I intend to use for the cover of one of the Mytho books when and if we self-publish them. It has nothing to do with the book, but I wanted a striking image for advertising purposes and I had to play to my strong suites. There are several artists in this pod, and it’s nice to be able to compare and contrast with each other's work. I’ve been working so intensively over the past few months that I’ve pulled ahead of them in many ways, though I’m still a monochromatic guy. Every couple of weeks I do something that is the best thing I’ve yet done. The prospective Mytho cover is one of those things. Last night I did some editorial stuff for Jark's novel. He’s rewriting at the moment, and he gave me the prologue for review. I wrote two pages of notes. He is good, not William Myrl good, but still.

A friend of his apparently has a friend who works for or is associated with a publishing company or press. His friend gave her one of his letters to read and mentioned his aspirations and she said she would like to see some of what he has done. I’m exited at the possibility enclosed, though it will probably be nothing. I told him we should make a writer’s pact, so that if one succeeds so too does the other. 

Speaking of success, I got a response from an agent. My mom sent out a query along with twenty typescript pages over seven months ago, so we assumed it was deceased. Instead, she gets a reply asking for the first 100 pages. 
I have confidence in my novel, Dragon's Summer, but I have less confidence that any given agent will be as enthused about it as I am. If they like it, we have a global victory condition; and if not, we have gained nothing. I wonder how many months we will wait to hear which way that particular dichotomy is leaning. As my primary audience is myself, it is hard to judge my own work fairly. It’s tailored to my tastes, because my tastes produced it. I wrote DS when I was twenty three, so I feel the young adult first person voice can only be so unreasonable. There is probably something I could do to better my chances, but I don’t know what it is. 

We had raw onions today, which was madness. I stuffed most of my portion in a baggy and shoved that down my pants. My celly did the same, and now we have chopped onions floating in pickle juice. You don’t know how amazing pickles are until you go to prison. They go with everything that is not a dessert, and their juice is our refrigerator. 

Yours, 

William Myrl (18)