Nail Biting is part of the Process

Monday, October 9th, 2006 | Finding An Agent, Selling Your Work, Uncategorized

  Needless to say, writing is hard. Not just the sitting in the chair and getting down what the Muse gives you, which is hard enough. (Though a joy, too. Please Muse, keep the work coming…)

   It’s also hard to sell the stuff. Once you get an agent, then you have to wait. You send the manuscript, finally revised and finished (for now) and it disappears into the hands of editors, who may take as long as six months or longer to pass on it. I haven’t sold anything yet, so I can’t tell you yet how long it takes to sell something.

    So you wait and you wonder. That is where I am now with my current chick lit manuscript. It is going into the hands of an excellent editor, and who knows how long it will take to hear anything, good or bad.

    But I am in this for the long haul. What else would I do? I find that writing is as necessary to me as breathing. That may change someday, and then I’ll do something else, but I hope not. Even if I end up 95 years old with a desk full of unpublished manuscripts and 15 cats, the journey is worth it. Even the wondering. Even the nail biting.

     Because I get to look into my character’s lives and live there for awhile. I get to hear their stories first. And that is a privilege, one that I can not see myself relinquishing.  An honor that I have no intention of laying down, whether I sell 100 books or none. I love my work, and that ultimately is why I do it.

    Love leads you to strange places, into the wilds, where no one else can go but you, where you have to walk alone. But I am glad to go there. Even when my nails are all bitten off. Who needs a good manicure anyway?

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