Had a good mini-streak of writing/editing again late last week, which was so reassuring! Was starting to worry after the Partying Frenzy of Easter and C2’s birthday whether I’d lost all my writing drive and if Writerly Self had finally been vanquished by Pregnant Self, etc. Happily, not so. Once we emerged from Partying Frenzy the writing bug bit me again and I managed four consecutive writing sessions of kid free time – evening, morning, post-lunch quiet time (forever indebted to amotherfarfromhome https://amotherfarfromhome.com/quiet-rest-time-for-toddlers/ for this idea!) and evening again.
Of course, as it often does, this meant writing replaced my Potential Sleep times. But I got ALL my beta comments processed AND finished polishing my submission pages so it was totally worth it.
In a turn of events entirely unrelated to the reduced sleep 👀 we then all got ill with a tummy bug so Saturday found us lolling around at home rather than frolicking in the sun at the much anticipated local farm spring festival. Gutted! It even had a friend as their magician…and lambs. LAMBS people! But sadly it was not to be. Maybe we’d already had our allotted amount of parties for one week.
So the start of this new week finds us still recovering our health and trying to restore some sense of order (Housewife Self is entirely suspended during ill times, but this has rather significant effects on our state of living.)
It’s getting closer to a time when I might actually send my book off to some agents. And rather than feeling smug, Writerly Self is starting to jibber. Suddenly I’m that bit closer to leaving this lovely phase of writing and improving and being full of hope and harbouring secret dreams of “yes of course it’ll just get rejected…but what if they actually love it and it’s a runaway success?! It’s not 100% impossible… J K Rowling and Stephanie Meyer had their big breaks, and I’m not even after films and global success, “just” getting published…”
Submitting to agents is going to mean giving up those secret “what ifs” and bracing myself for the real world. I wrote a fantasy novel. It’s my first, I’m pretty inexperienced, it’s a very competitive market, and I haven’t targeted current market trends (like fairy tale retellings or #own voices angles etc) I’ve just told the story I’ve been carrying with me since I became a teenager, as best I can. Agents are busy people who rarely take on new work, and even if what I’ve written has merit, it would have to arrive on the right desk at just the right moment to even get read.
So. Fortunately I still have to reread the bulk of the book again and see where it could take a final polishing. And chivvy Husband into giving his final feedback. And then apply said feedback where relevant. I still have a month or so in this pleasant phase of actually writing and dreaming of success before I have to step into the world trying to “sell” my book, of rejections, or even worse of my submissions package getting entirely ignored.
I was reading an interview with a published author last night. His first traditionally published novel was the tenth (TENTH) he’d written. His 5th and 6th had been agented but after two years of not selling that agent actually quit the whole industry and he was back to square one. Book #10 found an agent after nearly 70 queries and about a year of revisions before he could sign with that agent…
So. When the time comes to submit I guess it’s OK if Writerly Self wants to jibber a bit and hide in a cupboard. She has good reason to.
Country Mum Writes 