Submitting!

Oh my goodness, well hasn’t it been a while since my last post 👀 well here’s why: I have finally, finally started submitting my actual book to actual agents.

On the one hand, massive yay! On the other, it was the first time I actually started to hate any part of the writing process. I spent so long prepping a specific submissions pack for a specific agency who had non-standard requirements, and then guess what, they changed their requirements a few days later 🤦🏽‍♀️

Also the prep felt longer than it could have because often it was broken into 2-10 minute chunks between juggling my 1yo on my knee, persuading my 3yo that there are other fun things in the world which don’t involve bashing my keyboard about “working”, or yelling out the window to my older two to stop playing “capsize” fully clothed in the pond.

Then of course every time I thought I’d read my manuscript the final time, I’d find yet more typos or something else to tinker with and then have to review it all over again, because if you’re still finding typos, it ain’t ready.

But finally, it was. And off it went. Felt like such a threshold to click send on that first email. I rechecked name spellings and that I’d attached the correct file until I was nearly blind. C1 inevitably popped up despite supposedly being settled in bed because any time I take a while over something of course one of them pops up. But it was nice actually, we held hands and shared the excitement of the moment (while I watched all unpredictable kid movements like a hawk in case she accidentally pressed something that nuked the email but also sent it) and off it went. Bless C1 for being so supportive and engaged. It was good to mark the moment of stepping from Phase #6321 to Phase #6322.

When I tried to announce triumphantly to long-suffering Husband not long after his response was to put on loud music almost before I’d finished speaking, then give all his attention to Feline 3 and carry him lovingly from the room muttering sweet things to him. I think I may have broken him 👀

Inevitably after sending that first email, I found a spelling mistake in the cover materials 🤦🏽‍♀️ but as it was in the name of an author friend who’s willing to endorse my book at least it wasn’t anything to do with the agency or their authors and maybe, maaybe, they won’t even notice. Hey, I didn’t 🤷‍♀️😂

So despite checking my email obsessively over the next 12 hours of course there’s not yet been a response 🤔 so yesterday I worked on Submission Two (can you tell this is going to be an excruciatingly long process) and after reworking the drafts of stuff to get them more suited to the standard submission format, yet again reading everything I could find about the agent and digging deep through her clients’ works to try and find something that connected with my book, and then nearly destroying my computer when it inexplicably made half the email draft invisible and different font sizes (whyyy) and I had to rewrite the whole email and then check it All. Over. Again… After all that I did finally send off Submission Two. And actually got a nice autoresponse to say they’d received it, which was a pleasant balm to my obsessive email checking. Nice to know it’s not always a complete black hole I’m throwing my book-baby in.

Poor C1 had a rather different experience of Submission 2 as she popped up (of course) just as I was retyping the whole email and ready to destroy something. Unfortunately I didn’t have much sympathy for “I don’t know how to survive being so bored when can we go to the play farm/on holiday/to London”. I issued some rather blunt views on the nature of gratitude, ingratitude and resourcefulness punctuated with a yell at my computer for good measure and was firmly put on the Bad Mummy shelf by C1 for the next few hours.

Being on the Bad Mummy shelf involves being subjected to muttered invective, darkly wounded looks (being darkly wounded is an art form with C1 – both hating and yet hurt) and physically avoided whenever our paths are forced to cross (think cowering quasimodo plus darkly wounded glances).

So I resolved to leave all screens including phone upstairs for the afternoon and try and focus on being a Good Mummy. And thankfully after a couple of hours I was forgiven (ie a civil conversation about plaiting grass was started up and there were no more darkly wounded vibes 🙏).

So there we are. I’m now proudly part of two agents’ slush piles. It has Begun. I rather fear the shine of such an honour will wear off super quickly. What kind of industry sees rejection as a good thing, because at least you got a response? Farewell, decades of feeling pleasantly optimistic about my novel. Hello, gradual metamorphosis into Jaded Wannabe Author. It was a good 25 years. Book and I had a blast.