And So It Begins (Thursday February 1st)

[xakara]

The emotional rollercoaster  has taken off, cue the music....

I was expecting to be a little anxious today. I sent off the first query to an agent for my Urban Fantasy novel. It was a self-imposed goal date and I knew it was coming much quicker than it should have been. Then suddenly it was here.

Now, I didn't sleep well and there were too many errands to do to make up for it. So we're looking at anxious and tired. Throw in grumpy and we have just under half of seven neurotic dwarves running through here.

Well, I get passed not wanting to do anything but lay down when I get home and comb over my query letter six or seven more times. This is after I've gone over it for a solid week. But still, I found changes I wanted to make before I was finally able to just let it go. (OCD Much? Why yes, yes I do)

All calm and composed and ready to be done with it, I open my email (I love eletronic query submissions) and my entire composure is blown. Sometime during my research and link-o-plenty accumalation in January, I found an open call for short stories for a summer anthology. I squeaked in just under the deadline of Jan. 31 by a day. A Day.

So to have sent something off on the 30th and have something back on the 1st, from a publisher whose site says 8 to 10 weeks...well it didn't seem good. I just knew it was going to be a "I don't know who you think you are strolling in here at the eleventh hour thinking you were going to be in my anthology".  It wasn't. Not exactly.

The short story will NOT appear in the anthology. However, the editor enjoyed it (her words. I would have preferred "thoroughly enjoyed it" or "Utterly enjoyed it", but enjoyed isn't loathed and thus is great) has now passed it on to another editor in consideration of a different project. I'll be gotten back to in a few weeks I was told. So now I'm waiting.

Technically, I was already waiting, but now I know I'm waiting whereas before I just thought I was waiting. And now that I know I'm analyzing the message like a teenager reading into a voicemail after a first date.

She said a few weeks. Did she mean a few weeks? And is it a few weeks? Or is it whenever its gotten around to? Or is it more like the "allow 4 to 6 weeks for shipping and handling" that always shows up a week later kind of few weeks.

At least its a short story and it was a full ms submission so its in hand and I don't have to worry about bringing the goods on a partial submission request. That gives me something because I've read enough writers blogs and articles to know that passed along and accepted aren't by any means the same thing.

Still....she said a few weeks....

Yeah, I got issues. So in the spirit of having fewer of them, I'm going to let it go again just as I did when I first sent it off. Just like I let go of the agent query. And just like I'm going to let go of all the queries and submissions to come. The bonus is that being tired makes it rather easy because I don't want to do anything but go lay down. Which I think I'll do.

Another time,

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