11 February 1994
Something has happened. A real thing, not a weather change in my own head. One of the editors attached to a small online publishing platform read The Watermark, passed the address to a friend, and the friend passed it to an agent. This sounds absurd written down, which is one reason I trust it.
The agent rang on Tuesday. Rang. Not a form letter, not a padded envelope returning with my own handwriting on it, not a silence so long it becomes furniture. A voice. She had read the story and wanted to know whether I had a longer manuscript.
I said yes in the manner of a woman who absolutely had not spent the previous evening sitting on the floor arranging chapters into heaps and muttering at them. We meet next week. I am trying to be composed, but composure is for people with less electricity in the blood.
This is why the Web matters. Not because it is magic, and not because paper is dead, and not because every person with a modem is suddenly a publisher. It matters because it makes odd routes possible. It lets work slip under doors no one thought to guard.
I know enough not to declare victory. I also know enough to recognise motion. For the first time in months the work is moving faster than the doubt.