Deja Vu, Vu, Vu...
So I was super lucky at the LA-SCBWI conference because my manuscript sample was given to an editor to critique! A sweet, enthusiastic, very smart editor who, it turned out, was born and raised a few suburbs away from where I live now, and whom shares my same heritage. What are the chances of that???
And even more super-luckier (shut up, I know it's not a word, but I like it) when she surprised me by saying that my material was the favorite thing of hers that she had critiqued for the conference and could I please send her the rest? Not only that, but after describing another novel I'd written, asked if I could send that one too? This whole exchange showed me that she's not only pretty, smart, and funny...but has amazing taste in literature to boot! :) Woo-hoo! I should be ecstatic, right? And I am, except that I've discovered, to my horror, that I've somehow become pessimistic about this whole publishing process.
I don't know how or when it happened, but it happened. Me, the crazy optimistic, is cynical. Skeptical too. Like a girl who's been burned one too many times by jerky boyfriends and almost, but not quite, decides that she'll never meet the right guy so she gives up dating altogether. Because the right guy doesn't exist.
But then one night, she's out at Starbucks reading a book, when she meets a boy who seems different. Like he's funny, attentive, and they discover they have some intricate detail in common, and she thinks, "Maybe, oh maybe, this time will be different. Please, please don't turn out to be nothing. Make this guy the one who changes my mind." So she takes a chance and gives him her number, wondering if he'll ever call.
So that's where I'm at right now. Hoping that this time...will be different.
And even more super-luckier (shut up, I know it's not a word, but I like it) when she surprised me by saying that my material was the favorite thing of hers that she had critiqued for the conference and could I please send her the rest? Not only that, but after describing another novel I'd written, asked if I could send that one too? This whole exchange showed me that she's not only pretty, smart, and funny...but has amazing taste in literature to boot! :) Woo-hoo! I should be ecstatic, right? And I am, except that I've discovered, to my horror, that I've somehow become pessimistic about this whole publishing process.
I don't know how or when it happened, but it happened. Me, the crazy optimistic, is cynical. Skeptical too. Like a girl who's been burned one too many times by jerky boyfriends and almost, but not quite, decides that she'll never meet the right guy so she gives up dating altogether. Because the right guy doesn't exist.
But then one night, she's out at Starbucks reading a book, when she meets a boy who seems different. Like he's funny, attentive, and they discover they have some intricate detail in common, and she thinks, "Maybe, oh maybe, this time will be different. Please, please don't turn out to be nothing. Make this guy the one who changes my mind." So she takes a chance and gives him her number, wondering if he'll ever call.
So that's where I'm at right now. Hoping that this time...will be different.