Guys, I did it! No, I didn’t get an agent, but I did finally finish my revised manuscript and on 1st June I emailed it back to Potentially Interested Agent (PIA).

Huzzah, you may say (and I really wish you do, keep the word alive my friends. Our double-z words are scarce enough). On the sunny morning of the day I sent my manuscript I was so pumped with how good the new version was, I’d already started drafting my email to one of my two Top Target agents. I congratulated myself on the poetic choice of self-imposed deadline: a year and a day after I sent the original full manuscript (if it worked for the Owl and the Pussycat, what’s not to like?).

But. Of course there’s a but. As Child #4 is fond of reminding me, “everyone has a bum bum”. I didn’t send my shiny new revised book off that sunny morning. Hubby had finally started reading my draft (we both respond well to a deadline), and on by Deadline Day morning he’d made it to 61%.

So, I hung on for him to finish. New D-day deadline, 8pm. No one had actually read my revised ending. And I suspected that despite the changes, it hadn’t really changed enough from the original ending which Hubby found “meh”, and reading between the lines which PIA also found a bit meh.

It was a Saturday (all the best days are). I initiated a Let Daddy Read campaign. Dinner was cleared, baths were had, Children #1-5 were miraculously settled and put to bed which Hubby blasted on. 75%. 87%.

8pm came and went. The day was no longer sunny and auspicious. And I was no longer zinging with my own genius. What was I hanging on for? I’d committed to sending my MS off, because as the seasoned wisdom of trainer-makers tells us, sometimes you have to just do it.

Yes, Hubby had found a smattering of typos, and I’d duly made the corrections to my finished, title-paged No-Longer-Draft. But even I am confident the odd “to” instead of “too” really isn’t going to be a deal-breaker. Why was I still holding off? As 8pm became 8:30, then 9, and the odds of managing to send the email without doing something idiotic like not attaching the actual book dimmed with the setting sun. (Mumbrain is a Thing, friends)

I knew. Deep down in my writerly soul , I could hear the faint strains of “lalala” while my buried inner critic rocked with eyes screwed shut, fingers firmly jammed in ears.

The ending still needed work. Sure, I’d applied a layer of Heightened Tension, added some Cool Effects sauce and sprinkled extra Drama over the top. My Ending Lasagne was complete. But if the ingredients aren’t right, the dish just isn’t going to be tasty. The layers weren’t made from genius nuance and clever symbolism. They were made from a piece of this version, another bit of that, broken and arranged in the traditional jigsaw style of any good lasagne. No matter how well they fit, they were made of the wrong stuff.

By 9pm, Hubby had reached the untasty lasagne. He may not have quite finished, but the meh was already hiding in the sofa shadows, the damnation of kind excuses already begun. “I’m struggling a bit here, but it may just be because I’m tired”, “this bit’s confusing, but maybe I’ve just read for too long”. His tone, his face, his entire body language was screaming out MEH.

And what did I do in response? Did I sagely accept the evident truth I’d refused to admit to myself? Close down my laptop, grateful I’d not yet sent the revised manuscript and could now work on the ending until it zinged like the rest?

No. Of course I didn’t. Getting the revision done had been a massive push for the last month or more. Almost all my moments of potential rest had been invested in my Get It Done plan. If the baby woke me but managed to resettle at 5am, I worked on my book while the fam slept. Whenever I got all 5 kids settled after lunch AT THE SAME TIME, instead of catching up on that early start, I wrote. When #1-2 popped up repeatedly after “bedtime”, I hid in my writerly lair (sometimes with Child #2 camping out there with me, so I use “hid” loosely), and I wrote. I let things go. There was chicken poo in the conservatory and catsick in the living room, and I wrote. And now I was Done Writing. I’d used up my writing crazies. I’d made my sacrifices on the altar of Poetic Self-Imposed Deadline, and now I needed the release and protection of that promised deadline. So in the face of all the husbandly meh, I didn’t back down.

I asked “Have you found any more typos?”, and at his “no” I hurried back to my writerly lair (which still smells faintly of the 17 chicks I raised in it years ago) and I sent that email. With no known typos, and with my revised manuscript with its meh ending stubbornly attached.

I’d taken a year (and a day) to return it. How dare I even consider taking longer? Surely the agent was sitting by her computer, eyebrow raised as the final grains of her year-long egg timer ran the free fall gauntlet. Surely if I’d taken so long, I couldn’t possibly worry I’d rushed it.

Rushing buys time for regrets. That’s a line from my book. Even my characters were trying to warn me.

Hubby finished the book (a thousand blessings on his lovely, encouraging soul). We barely spoke about how the ending struck him; it was obvious, and it was bedtime. He’d read for hours – he needed some time without my words in his head. The micro-discussions, fitted around the day-to-day of ministering to 5 small people with many needs, and vocal (and probably true) suggestions on how I could fix things by introducing a magic helmet which bestowed special powers. He suggested a fix I’d tried in one draft, then cut for fear of the narrative getting too choppy. He validated stuff I already knew. He made it impossible for my writing gremlin to keep those fingers in her ears. And before bed I already knew the bones of how I’d rewrite it. And it had the potential to zing.

I dreamt last night I hadn’t sent it after all, and my annoyance at wussing out of my own deadline was dissolved in the relief of getting another shot at my one shot. But no.

So instead of the relief and excitement I’d anticipated on finally sending it out, the feeling is…

…meh.