Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Keep calm and carry on...


So I made it to the Agent Pitch final of the GUTGAA Agent Pitch contest!  Much rejoicing! Celebrate!

Cue twitchy clicking of the link on Deana's blog every twenty minutes all day Sunday and Monday. Nothing.

Add in a relaxation pep-talk after each failed click. Determine that Tuesday I will NOT check the blog all day because I am making myself nuts, and my 15 month old does not approve of Mommy huddling over her computer instead of playing ball and Legos.  I have things to do! A husband's birthday to prepare for! A baby to nurture and play with!

So I go forth to the thrift store! To the grocery store! Productivity! No desperate clicking! Ha ha! I am a real human being! I use exclamation points and everything!

And I get a text message from my husband to tell me that an agent commented! They want to see a partial!

.... I am wrist deep in raw gyoza filling. I can't stop what I'm doing to go and sit down to send off the files. I've got to finish dinner, then feed the daughter, (Because throwing her into a box of goldfish crackers is apparently considered "lazy parenting" instead of a lesson in survival skills.), then bath the daughter, then read her a book, and put her to bed. Establishing a bedtime routine for daughter is vital to my sanity, which dreams of a day when sleep deprivation is something that happens to other people.

Five hours later I finally manage to get to work on tweaking the submission materials. I've imagined every ridiculous permutation of possible outcomes, from the agent waiting impatiently, nay desperately! for my little gold brick to hit her hands so she can call me to rave over my genius, (I giggled at the thought; I couldn't even imagine it properly.) to the agent calling me after receipt to say, "Wow, you really put a shine on that godawful P.O.S. in your query letter. Not interested, and I'm letting every other agent on Twitter know that you're out there so no one else suffers the way I have! Good luck on Amazon self-publishing!" (Strangely, that one was much easier to imagine. Thank you so damn much for the support, brain.)

Having a daughter has done the one thing that I thought was impossible. I've learned to be patient. I sent it off, updated my submissions spreadsheet, set a note to check back in six weeks, and then, I went to bed.  This doesn't seem like a big deal, but for someone with OCD tendencies, it was huge. I didn't stay up all night, letting my brain froth itself into a frenzy.

I didn't sit there and check my email thirty seven times, write rhapsodic posts on facebook and my blog about how I'd FINALLY DONE IT, or call my mother at midnight, or any of the crazypants behavior I would have indulged in pre-daughter.

Of all the things I expected to happen in my life by having a child, I did not see that one coming. Hormones are weird.








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