Okay, I realize I'm a day late with the Momentum update, and I also realize I'm mostly just pretending that anyone noticed. But I had a good reason, and we'll get to that soon enough.
First though, let's take care of business. I said back at the beginning of September that my goal this month was to stay on top of life. This meant making an effort to keep myself from being weighed down by the mundanity that accompanies the transition from the lovely freedom of summertime to the numbing routines of returning to the school year. Which isn't to say that I don't still love my job. I do. But my job has a lot of little hoops that need to be jumped through over the course of any given week, and I've learned from experience that procrastinating my way around these hoops instead of just dealing with them can bring on some unnecessary stress. As far as reaching that goal goes, I'll call it a qualified success. I've stayed on top of things fairly well so far. I'm not feeling burdened by too many small tasks growing into big ones as I pretend they aren't there until they're unavoidable and I discover I have to do all of them at the same time. My "Epic Win" phone app was a big help, though too quickly I figured out ways to work around the accountability it tried to provide me. The work-arounds were temporary though, and (at least for me) having that little red circle with the number show up on the corner of the app icon is a decent way to eventually guilt yourself into taking care of business. I think I'm going to keep Epic Win going for awhile, and let my character level his way up through at least a few more months of accomplishment.
As for this month, since we're in October now, I'm actually thinking about two different and completely separate goals. Not because I have so much free time and ambition that I need another layer of challenge, but because I have one goal that I'd really like to work on to get ready for my November goal and another one that will help me get ready for my December goal. My year of monthly resolutions is drawing to an end after all, and I'm close enough to the finish line to know what I still have left I want to do. So for October, even this is kind of vague: My goal is to work on the first steps of what will be a larger goal to end the year. Times two. Just trust me on this.
Now, to get into the reason why I'm a day late. If you've been following things throughout the summer here, you're aware I spent a good chunk of life rewriting an older manuscript that I felt deserved a better shot than it had before. I was very happy with how the revision turned out, and just before the school year started I began sending out query letters to literary agents in the hope that one would eventually offer to take me on as a client. This would mean they felt so strongly about my manuscript that they'd be ready to advocate for it with publishers and editors and try to get me a book deal. Since agents are far more networked than authors are, having an agent is pretty much a necessity if you want a serious book deal. And since everyone out there with the dream of becoming a published author knows this, getting an agent is NOT an easy thing to do.
The first big step in this process is to get agents interested enough in your project that they'll ask to read it so they can consider if they want to represent you. This is what the query letter is for. Most writers will send out many of these things without ever receiving any response more positive than a form rejection letter. I myself have dozens. But at the beginning of September I chose four agents I thought might be good matches for the manuscript, wrote the query, proofread it several times, crossed my fingers, and sent it out. Within a week I received my first form rejection, which didn't really sting because I more or less expected it. But then about a week later (yesterday) another response arrived, this time from someone who wanted to see the full manuscript. Which was a nice surprise, particularly since it was only the second response I'd gotten.
Now, as happy as I was to get a request, I'm not really getting my hopes up too high about this going any further. Of course I'd love it to happen, but the odds are stacked high against that happening. Like I've explained before, getting a manuscript is like successfully jumping through a hoop only to discover there's an even smaller hoop (getting an offer of representation) waiting on the other side. And even if I got that far, there's still no guarantee things would go as far as publication. As much as I believe in the manuscript I wrote, I'm realistic about how difficult of a business publishing is. But I guess that's why I see it more as a dream than a goal. Making my way through the process to see this project come to life as a published novel would probably feel for me much the same way it would for many other people to find out their lottery ticket was a big winner -- something great that you have to know better to expect will happen.
But you know? For the moment it's nice to know I get to spend the next few months waiting to hear back from my maybe future agent and letting the dream breathe a little in the meantime.
