A Day in the Life...

It's been incredibly busy since I elected to enter the Amazon Contest. Up at 6:30am I've spent every spare minute, editing, revising, questioning, re-doing, grumping, editing, and re-doing again, my pitch, my excerpt and my manuscript. And that wasn't just today, it was on the weekend too.

Wrote a great initial pitch, which though having been told the writing was glorious, was also told is was glorious for a recipe book. Oops. Revamp. revamp. revamp. The other authors in the contest are awesome. Encouraging and more than helpful with their advice.

In between all the re-vamping recieved a few emails. Here's the first:

Dear. Ms. McLellan,
Thank you for your query. As interesting as your novel sounds, I don't believe I would be the best agent to represent your work. Best of luck to you though, and thank you for thinking of me.
Cordially,
xxxx

My response?
#@%$ a duck.

But I didn't send that. I did however, email her back to ask if she knew of anyone who might be the best to represent me. Who wants to bet on whether or not I get a response?

More revamping, obsessing and emailing of a great friend who has more than generously encouraged me since reading my manuscript. He has agreed to be my 'author breakdown' spam buddy by virtue of his non-response when I asked if I was bugging him yet.

Then, later on, another email:

Thank you for your submission to XXX
Currently, I'm not considering new material at this time.
I will be requesting projects again starting in April 2010.
I invite you to resubmit your query in April.
I will be deleting all those coming in from Feb. 1st 2010 to March 31st, 2010.
All the best,
XXX

Sure, great, just fine. I spent hours and hours, revising, re-working, re-doing, re-everything, and you just take your finger and in a millisecond, delete everything I've done.

I will not re-submit.

But me and a thousand or so other authors, may just end up going bonkers. Buy books people. They are treasures and all those people including publishers and agents who take the majority of the money from the books we've written...well...they're hurting. Help them make their 20% so that we can make our buck and continue to be published. Along with the magic of the written word, books contain so much more that isn't seen: intense commitment and devotion, dedication, hours and hours and days and weeks of passionate slogging along as the story builds, obsession and attachment, blood, sweat, tears, high blood pressure, headaches, sacrifice, numb fingers.....If you could only see what each book you bought really contained, you'd be willing to pay quadruple the price and would believe you'd recieved an awesome deal.

I'm exhausted and done for the day. Smart thinking of the friend who suggested I detail all this minute goings on. It really isn't so minute after all. And buy books. My sanity and the sanity of thousands of others depends on you!

Happy Holidays and All that Stuff!

Hey cyber world,

I'm taking a well earned holiday from life and am heading away for two weeks, my sole aim, to enjoy myself, relax and accomplish as little as possible. Okay, maybe the accomplish part is a lie, but this is going to be about fun accomplishment.

My back still pains me, but less than it was, and my goal is to come back to the real world in 2010 with a renewed fighting spirit. The world of agents and publishers served to poke a bit of a hole in my gumption during the last part of this year, but I refuse, refuse, refuse to believe there isn't someone out there that wants a manuscript that is funny and entertaining, quirky, interesting and complex. Like hallo!! There is a block buster Sandra Bullock movie sitting in my hands and all you sillies aren't getting that. I have no problem with moving right to a movie without the intercept of a publisher, but I think the full meal deal would be a win/win/ win for everyone.

I may start publishing parts of the book here next year. We'll see. I haven't yakked about it that much on here, so I have a bunch of options up my sleeve, and after a little rejuvenation, look out world! I may also post a resume. It would view something like this. Type A personality, totally driven, accomplishment oriented counsellor/author seeks an agent/publisher who can keep up. I have more than enough motivation, smarts, and drive for both of us to make this book a success, so if you can manage to get off your seat and send me an email, I'll be happy to do a lot of the work and whip your butt into shape.

Happy holidays all. I'll see ya all in 2010. In the meantime, I'll be hanging on the beaches of Cabo and splatted against a tree or two in the Kananaskis. Cheers!

The Silence of December

As I have continued to work on shrinking my expanded back side over the last month, through long walks with my dog and assorted muscle burning exercises, I've had a lot of time to think. What did I think? Primarily I thought that I feel a lot healthier and more energetic when I'm on the move, rather than engaging in the sedintary activity of typing away on my computer. I've felt guilty a few times, when I thought I should be pushing things more regarding my writing, but the reality is, I pushed myself incredibly this summer. In just over 4 months time I completed my novel, all 387 pages of it. I don't even want to fathom how many hours I spent sitting in front of my computer screen as I worked at hitting my goal. And I did it. I finished my novel, I've been successful in making it funny and entertaining, with a great story. But now, things are no longer soley under my control. Trying to find an agent or publisher who is willing to take a risk on a first time author seems to be almost worse than finding a needle in a haystack. I mean, if someone puts a needle in a haystack, you know it is in there somewhere, and it's just a matter to taking the time to find it. With finding an agent or a publisher, there are all sorts of factors to consider, including wondering if my query letters are stunning enough. Maybe in one of my next posts I'll write an online query letter. Then it will be there for all to see in cyber space.
In the meantime, I've been in the midst of a great chasm of silence. No rejections, no nothing in my inbox day after day. Just waiting for some responses that seem so long in coming. And when you believe in something, like I do in this book, it can be hard to sit back and wait even when you know it's the right thing to do. Right now, waiting is the right thing, but boy, would I be happy, if when this silence finally breaks, it the is sound of "We would love to see the rest of your manuscript." that shatters the stillness of my inbox.