Thud!

What is the sound of hope changing course? Not a crash, bang or even whimper--just a loud, dull thud that hits you in the gut and attaches to your core. Yesterday I heard from agent Number Two that "due to competition, the best plan of attack might be to change course--to team up with Gretchen Jackson and write her story in her voice...."

Ouch. What happened to "this is one of the greatest stories of all time?" (another one of his direct quotes.) What happened to "we'll sell this in two weeks..."? What happened to the man who swooped in and put my life on hold for a year with his great plans to write the next Seabiscuit?

"Barbaro fatigue" is what he calls it...Competition from other players in the Barbaro story ("Take your time," he told me. "The best books aren't written overnight...")...Fear and uneasiness in the marketing departments....Perhaps the downward economy...Who knows? Publishing is any one's best guess.

So now what? I need to regroup, rethink and ponder the possibility that A) Gretchen would want to do this and B) I would. At stake is a lot of time, energy, and research on my part that somehow should not go to waste combined with her general reluctance to "go public." Also the question of her voice bugs me. Yes, some of it needs to be her voice, but perhaps some could be mine--the objective narrator who has the benefit of detachment, to a certain extent.

How to tell the story of someone else's euphoria, pain, self doubt and heartbreak in two voices....Perhaps a new kind of symphony; perhaps just her song; perhaps nothing in the end.