Ready for the Final Touches

I have that chapter done. I have it dropped into the manuscript where I want it and now, my goal is to spend the weekend doing a read-through, polishing some spots nm pointed out, and making sure that the chapter fits in where I’ve put it and does what I want.

I have a couple of people lined up to take a last look at it. And then I think I’m ready to shop for an agent. I’m scared, I admit. But I’m hoping that spending 2013 being rejected from most places for most things will have given me the thick skin I need to do it.

In kind of related news, I read this post over at Sarah Monette’s blog. She’s an author I love*. And to hear that her career tanked scares the crap out of me. I know everyone’s path is their own, but I’m sitting here right now thinking, “Oh, when I get an agent…” like then it will be all Big Rock Candy Mountain. But it’s just getting in a door to a different room with different weird things going on.

I’m worried about Project X coming together. I don’t have any objective reason to worry, that I can tell. But it’s a lot of moving parts and it’s the first time the parties involved have done something like this and, well, there’s a lot that has to come together to make it work. It probably wasn’t the best strategy, psychologically, to get my part done so early, because then it’s just a lot of waiting around seeing if the other parts come together. But it only took me as long as it took me. There wasn’t a way for me to drag it out.

But I really want it to happen. And the more I want it to happen, the more I’m worried that it won’t. That, at the last minute, everything will fall apart. And then what? I have this cool thing that I’ll have to try to sell, I guess.

I don’t want to be rich from writing. I don’t even want to be able to support myself with my writing. I just want to go into Parnassus and Barnes & Noble here in town and see a book by me on the shelf.

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*Check out the comments below. I like the stories of hers I’ve read, but I haven’t read enough of her to have caught the terrible crap Rachel warns against.