Free Walk like a Man by Robert J. Wiersema

And when it was done, I was strangely pleased by what I had. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew that with a little work it would be better. It might even be good.
    So Cori and I worked it. Over and over, draft by draft, we made those notebooks into a novel.
    We polished, and we honed, and when I thought it was ready, I sent the first section to an editor I had come to know over my past few trips to Toronto. That was March 2003.
    The next month, I took the ferry over to Vancouver for the first show of the Canadian leg of the tour for The Rising. Greg and John picked me up, and we headed out to the old Pacific Coliseum. It was only eleven at night by the time we got there, but there were already more than fifty people in line.
    It was, as Caryn would say, 9 a clusterfuck. The word was out about the pit, and everyone wanted to be in.
    We got our names on the list, got our numbers, and crashed at Greg’s in-laws’ place for the night.
    I don’t know if I told Greg and John that I had sent the book out. I probably did. It was probably casual, like a fait accompli. I generally tried not to make too big of a deal out of anything to do with my writing. I couldn’t let anyone see how important it was to me. How central to my being.
    My mother, I’m sure, would have called it putting all of my eggs into one basket. Yet it was more than that, even. I had staked my whole life on one roll of the dice. One reader.
    I had no idea what I would do if she didn’t like it.
    The show the next night was the show in which Springsteen allegedly audibled in “My Hometown” instead of “Incident on 57th Street.” It was the show where John and I got mildly hammered when we discovered—after buying the beers—that they weren’t allowed on the floor. What option did we have but to pound through the eight beers in less than twenty minutes? It was the show where we stood in front of Clarence for the first time, and I got to sing along at the top of my lungs to the final lines of “This Hard Land.”
    And it was the night I discovered I loved “Dancing in the Dark.”
    It was the guitar heavy version that we had first seen in Tacoma the year before, but now it seemed different. When he hit the line “I’m sick of sittin’ round here trying to write this book,” I laughed out loud. It was what I had been doing for months. It was exactly how I had been feeling.
    That song’s been a touchstone for me ever since. In 2008, at three shows in a row, I suspect my laughter might have been a little maniacal: I was mired in the depths of what would become Bedtime Story, my second published novel, which was then just a stack of notebooks with no end in sight.
    But that moment in 2003, that first laugh of recognition? My manuscript was away, being looked at by an editor, and I knew that no matter what happened, whether it got published or went back into the drawer, I was a writer. It was like the gypsy woman had promised. I was right on schedule.
    I’m dying for some action
    I’m sick of sitting ’round here trying to write this book
    I need a love reaction
    come on now baby gimme just one look
    1 . Interestingly, none of the singles hit number one on the Billboard chart. “Dancing in the Dark” was blocked first by Duran Duran’s “The Reflex,” then by Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” Yes, I appreciate the irony of Springsteen’s synth-pop gambit being chart-blocked by the pretty-boy synth kings in Duran Duran. And, hey, “When Doves Cry” is just a fantastic song.
    2 . As I was writing this, I posted this observation on Facebook and Twitter—never have I posted anything that has started so much dialogue, or caused so much disagreement. Several people argued that “The River” was Springsteen’s most existentially wrought song. Some argued “The Promise.” “State Trooper” and “Stolen