Are You Still There?

I leaped up from the computer chair, arms akimbo, and bellowed “I am the best writer in the wooooooorld!”

Okay, so I know that my statement was ridiculous, but it’s quite the sensation finishing one’s first novel. I have been working on this project for three years—laying awake till the wee hours of the morning phrasing the next paragraph in my chapter , neglecting my children as I stared blankly at the computer screen, setting aside my blog (which was a little like giving up crack cocaine), —and now it is done…

ish.

Even though it feels like I’ve climbed Mt. Everest, really, I’ve only made it to base camp. Next, I need to snag myself an agent—which is next to impossible—and then my agent needs to snag me a publisher.

I’ve read countless articles of the probability of getting one’s first novel published. They are similar to the odds of finding a human finger in the all-white meat of your crispy Chicken McNugget.

Perhaps that’s why it took me over a month just to write the last four pages of the book. I am not afraid of the inevitable rejections, just that they will ALL be rejections.

“Courage take, Bethany,” I tell myself. “You have beaten the odds before. Remember last year as the X-ray tech looked at the image of your pelvis and saw that your IUD had wigged its way out of your Uterus, do-sa-doed through your abdominals and tethered itself to your fallopian tube. Remember how she said that you had better go and purchase a lottery ticket because the odds of having and IUD predicament such as yours was even less likely than winning the jackpot.

(I only thought it appropriate, given my absence from my blog, to mention something highly inappropriate and dedicate the inappropriateness to my mother, who is now blushing… and not with pride).

Anyhow, now I will dedicate myself to the task of finding an agent. And while finding an agent requires many inquiries, it also requires lots of waiting. And as I wait, instead playing Bejeweled Blitz for hours (as I have been), I thought it might be a better use of my time to pick up my blog again.

Hello old friend. I have missed you