Not dramatic enough?

A fellow blogger was attempting to get a book published about dealing with deployment, among other things and was unfortunately rejected by several publishers.  It appears they don’t think her material is dramatic enough.  After reading her post I felt a bit fired up about what the publishers qualify as dramatic enough.  Surviving a deployment with sanity intact and no major issues doesn’t seem overly dramatic to attract enough readers I suppose but I think the publishers are missing the point.

The mere fact that we military wives go long stretches of time without our spouses on hand and have to manage a billion things by ourselves is dramatic.  I’m not trying to be a drama queen or anything here either.  I’m just saying that it’s a feat in and of itself to do what we do.  It’s not an easy life we lead and some of us have a much harder time than others.  I guess if Jan had a book filled with tales of cheating and lies and all kinds of other scandal, the publishers would have scooped the book up immediately but her story isn’t about that.  It’s about a military wife just trying to keep her family together and her sanity intact while worrying over her husband’s safety.  It’s an insight into her mind and life that offers a lot to potential readers, military and civilian.  And she weathered her last deployment quite well but I guess the publishers don’t feel that is really newsworthy, especially given the high number of books about war on the market right now.

Drama is …

1.  Those quiet moments before you say goodbye one final time before your spouse deploys – you try and put on a brave face but inside your crying your eyes out worried that you’ll never see your spouse again.

2.  Those first days after your spouse leaves and it feels like your spouse has died b/c of his or her absence from the house.

3.  Seeing a news headline about an explosion or rocket attack and wondering if your spouse was injured or killed.

4.  Feeling like you’ve lost yourself when you haven’t seen your spouse in so long that you forget what he or she sounds like or looks like. 

5.  Crying so hard until your eyes are bloodshot b/c you miss your spouse so bad and you know you can’t do a damn thing about it.

6.  Shutting yourself off so you don’t feel too much b/c if you let it all in, you’ll probably cave under the pressure.

7.  Breaking down over doing the last load of laundry with your spouse’s clothes in it after he or she leaves.

8.  Not really communicating with each other b/c you can’t get too emotional over the phone – you don’t want to distract your spouse from his or her job.

9.  Having every conceivable big thing break in your house while your spouse is gone b/c of course things don’t break when they are home.

10.  Anticipating what you’ll do if you get that dreaded knock at the door telling you your spouse is gone.

I could go on and on and I’m sure many of you with families have even more behind the scenes drama worthy of telling.  Feel free to add to this list.

Anyway, what I’m saying is our lives are dramatic enough without having a lot of outwardly scandalous things happening.  I think many people would be just as interested to see how military spouses cope with just the day-to-day and actually weather these deployments gracefully.