Warning: not-so-deep-thoughts ahead.
It’s been a bit of a rough week here, which basically means I’ve spent many post-work hours curled up on the couch with a book, stuffing my face with garlic-stuffed olives. (Yum, by the way: I dare you to hold onto a sulk while eating something that full of salty goodness.) It’s easy to fall into hermithood -yes, I know that’s not a real word- when your spouse travels a lot: it’s also occasionally a good thing to do. You curl up in your cave for a bit, forget to eat anything for dinner except the above-mentioned olives, and maybe your dog begins to give you the sort of looks your mother might have if you’d done this at the age of 12 (which you did, of course) – but it’s a nice way to recharge.
Also, sometimes you get good ideas from an overdose of salt and brine-marinated garlic. WIP #4 is underway, and it’s looking pretty decent so far. 🙂
And now here I am, having re-read most of the Dark Tower series in five days, well-salted, a bit paler for lack of sunlight, looking down at the dew-tracks of the deer Her Dogginess terrified off the lawn last night and listening to Einaudi, trying to decide if it makes sense to send out a few more queries this morning.
I’ve sent out a finite number of those thus far: I’m taking it nice and slow this time around. But there’s something sort of pulling-on-that-loose-tooth satisfying about sending out just a few more. It’s nervewracking and time-consuming and hard work, but most things worth having are, and even a negative response is something I can use. This is a slow industry, and it’s not a shock when it takes three plus months to hear back, so sending that query letter plus 1st 3 (or whatever) takes on a weird little hollering-at-the-cliffs quality for me: I want that echo. The more of them I get the clearer a picture I have of what this MS actually looks like–Â and yes, I did just compare querying to sonar there didn’t I. Whoo.
I’m only on cup ‘o coffee numero uno, folks.
But whatever, you know, I think it kind of works. I know what WEAVE looks like to me; I know what it looks like to the people who read it… and I’m starting to know what it looks like to people in the publishing industry now. Every reply makes the picture a little clearer. It’s not always what I want to see or what I expected to see, but it’s all what I need to see, if that makes any sense.
So I’ll keep cautiously chipping away at my list of Agents of Awesome (and I’m afraid that is indeed what I called this particular spreadsheet), and keep writing The Next Big Thing (for me, anyway), while I listen for the echoes.
/comtemplative mode