I was talking about movies this morning with some good friends, and we were sharing our opinions of a movie  two of us had recently seen. Now, I had loved the movie in question. I had found it lushly animated, voiced with an uncanny marksmanship, and intensely imaginative. One of my friends, however, made a moue of distaste when asked her opinion. She didn’t care for the darker, more disturbing elements of the film.

Perhaps it was that I was already acquainted with the writer’s larger body of work, so I was prepared for more of his unique dance on the line between darkness and light, his unnerving portrayals of the unseemly and unsettling aspects of what lies beneath all that is goodness and sunshine. For some, that vision is too discomfiting to be enjoyable. I was transported, while she found herself squirmingly rooted to her seat.

Our “potato–po-tah-to” parting of ways about this movie wasn’t earth-shattering; we all like what we like, for reasons sometimes unknown even to ourselves.

What struck me about it was how unpredictable those reactions can be in any given audience, for we have seen movies together before and had violently identical reactions to them. But, particularly because I am beginning to prepare my second novel for (hopeful) publication, I find those differences in opinion a bit more unsettling now.

 I find myself imagining that every person who will be reading my novel now, just as every viewer who watched that film did, will have a slightly different reaction to it, one colored by their experiences, by their tastes, by their sleep habits, by the amount of patience they have, whatever happens to be at hand the day it comes to their attention. 

And imagining, I wonder: Will it land in the hands of someone who will see it as I saw it? Who will read it as I wrote it?  Will the one person who reads it and doesn’t care for it stop it from getting into the hands of one who may love it?

 The onset of this new round of submissions has me fearing (in all honesty, knowing more than fearing) that publication, if it comes, may come more as a result of luck and timing than any other thing, and I find that daunting and not a little depressing, though it won’t stop me from submitting.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking today as I continue my research of publishers and agents. Which one might be the one who will like it?