ding dong the witch is dead
clap your hands. get out of bed. ding dong the wicked witch of february is over.
i believe no further comment there is necessary.
what IS necessary, is that i write faster, writer faster! i am really scared now. look what i've gotten myself into with a simple, innocent query: i have a potential agent on my hands (still). as i mentioned last time, i am nervously waiting for her to get back to me regarding the query i re-submitted. after the indicated response time listed in her blurb in The Novel and Short Story Writer's Market (2007 edition) had passed, i emailed a one-liner follow-up. somehow it ended up in my spam, but i found it a few days later, hope resurging and along with it a new, very real, nervous fear. why? because she responded with another cliff-hanger: "we will get back to you soon." this isn't just wishful thinking, i really don't believe she would keep stringing me along only to turn me down. again, if she wanted to get rid of me, i would have gotten a good swift "no" from the very beginning. she has been polite and positive (albeit brief) throughout this correspondence, and i think that's a good sign. she's not disregarding me as a pesky unknown first-timer. she's taking me seriously and validating me as a writer by leaving the door open. just this much in itself counts as success on my first hit. call it beginner's luck, but this is huge for me. very. big. deal.
not to toot my own horn. i'm just nervously rambling about it because i'm scared. scared of success. i'll let that sink in.
i feel like i'm living in the ying-yang. everything else is going to crap -- my love life, my work life, my emotional life -- but that's okay, as long as it makes a good story. as i said before, now would be a really really good time for that agent to make me an offer, for lack of any others. i have attained dirt poverty level (as if i wasn't already there, but is really dirty) thanks to stoker screwing me over. i was depending on my next week's worth of work on my paycheck to cover my rent, but since they gave me a timely discharge on a saturday, my last check represented only one day's worth of work. as such, i'm two-thirds short of what i need. i'm filing for unemployment, but i had to take out a cash advance on my credit card just to fill the gap. i've stayed far away from those evil cash advances for the life of my credit history, until now. just had to bite the bullet last night, or face eventual eviction. for those of you considering, this is the romantic life of the starving artist.
but at least i may have a book deal in my sooner-than-later future. i'll admit i am operating somewhat under delusions of greatness and impending fame, but that's just my invincibility complex justifying my lifestyle, defending the oath of poverty i've taken like some ascetic monk suffering for the sake of my art. if insanity and brilliance are a double-edged sword, then i suppose depravity is the price you pay for celebrity.
that, and four years of agony. ecstasy and agony, rather. i've been trying to push a novel out of the womb-space of my creativity, and spurred on by the prospect of representation, i'm suddenly writing a novel. as in, it's starting to look done. approaching completion. this is also very scary. after four years of toting this thing around, my little brainchild, it just seems unreal that it could ever be DONE. then what? i have nothing to justify my lifestyle, no purpose to keep my very cells motivated in their chore of respiration. my life is over when my novel is over, because my novel IS my life. but then, i'm putting the cart before the horse, just a bit. in reality, i'm just a dreamer, same as you. imagine that. this could all be fiction.
i believe no further comment there is necessary.
what IS necessary, is that i write faster, writer faster! i am really scared now. look what i've gotten myself into with a simple, innocent query: i have a potential agent on my hands (still). as i mentioned last time, i am nervously waiting for her to get back to me regarding the query i re-submitted. after the indicated response time listed in her blurb in The Novel and Short Story Writer's Market (2007 edition) had passed, i emailed a one-liner follow-up. somehow it ended up in my spam, but i found it a few days later, hope resurging and along with it a new, very real, nervous fear. why? because she responded with another cliff-hanger: "we will get back to you soon." this isn't just wishful thinking, i really don't believe she would keep stringing me along only to turn me down. again, if she wanted to get rid of me, i would have gotten a good swift "no" from the very beginning. she has been polite and positive (albeit brief) throughout this correspondence, and i think that's a good sign. she's not disregarding me as a pesky unknown first-timer. she's taking me seriously and validating me as a writer by leaving the door open. just this much in itself counts as success on my first hit. call it beginner's luck, but this is huge for me. very. big. deal.
not to toot my own horn. i'm just nervously rambling about it because i'm scared. scared of success. i'll let that sink in.
i feel like i'm living in the ying-yang. everything else is going to crap -- my love life, my work life, my emotional life -- but that's okay, as long as it makes a good story. as i said before, now would be a really really good time for that agent to make me an offer, for lack of any others. i have attained dirt poverty level (as if i wasn't already there, but is really dirty) thanks to stoker screwing me over. i was depending on my next week's worth of work on my paycheck to cover my rent, but since they gave me a timely discharge on a saturday, my last check represented only one day's worth of work. as such, i'm two-thirds short of what i need. i'm filing for unemployment, but i had to take out a cash advance on my credit card just to fill the gap. i've stayed far away from those evil cash advances for the life of my credit history, until now. just had to bite the bullet last night, or face eventual eviction. for those of you considering, this is the romantic life of the starving artist.
but at least i may have a book deal in my sooner-than-later future. i'll admit i am operating somewhat under delusions of greatness and impending fame, but that's just my invincibility complex justifying my lifestyle, defending the oath of poverty i've taken like some ascetic monk suffering for the sake of my art. if insanity and brilliance are a double-edged sword, then i suppose depravity is the price you pay for celebrity.
that, and four years of agony. ecstasy and agony, rather. i've been trying to push a novel out of the womb-space of my creativity, and spurred on by the prospect of representation, i'm suddenly writing a novel. as in, it's starting to look done. approaching completion. this is also very scary. after four years of toting this thing around, my little brainchild, it just seems unreal that it could ever be DONE. then what? i have nothing to justify my lifestyle, no purpose to keep my very cells motivated in their chore of respiration. my life is over when my novel is over, because my novel IS my life. but then, i'm putting the cart before the horse, just a bit. in reality, i'm just a dreamer, same as you. imagine that. this could all be fiction.