In spite of what you might infer from the length of time that’s passed since my last post, when I vowed to write every day, I have actually been doing so. I’ve written a couple of articles and have been continuing to work on the research for my next book. I’ve also been writing a number of query letters to agents. Don’t scoff–those can be incredibly time-consuming! My goal has been to complete five queries each week and so far I’ve been meeting my quota.
I started doing some additional research in the hopes of writing a “killer” query letter. One literary agent’s blog waxed rhapsodic about a writer submitting to him who had the first chapter of her manuscript posted on her Web site. “She already had a Web site!” I do, too, and that entry started me thinking about posting my first chapter as well. I’m such a nervous Nellie, though–want to know what my biggest concern is? It’s not that no one will read it, or if they do read, that they won’t like it. It’s that there’d be some unscrupulous person out there who’d plagiarize it. But I guess that’s a concern no matter where you’re publishing. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and get it out there.
If I do, you’ll be the first to know.
In the meantime, I am labeling today “Go Day” because it is time for me to begin writing the next book. The voices in my head have reached an unbearable crescendo and I have to get them out of there before I become a crazy person muttering to myself all day. Oh, wait–I already do that.
I had not planned on starting the book today, but my daughter, who is definitely serving as my life coach at this point (how scary is it when your 10-year-old is filling that function for you?), handed me a beautiful drawing yesterday. We’d been in the car listening to Miley Cyrus belt out “The Climb”. That’s the great thing about having kids: you don’t have to think up an excuse for liking their music; you can just pretend you’re only listening to it for them. Anyway, as we were listening, I told her, in regards to my writing, that I often felt those opening lines myself: “I can almost see it, that dream I’m dreaming; But a voice inside my head says ‘You’ll never reach it'”.
She sat down with paper and crayons as soon as we got home and presented me with the most inspirational writing I’ve ever seen. She’d drawn a beautiful green mountainside (Get it? “The Climb”?), and above it she had written “May The Writing Gods Be With You.” But that’s not what did it for me. She had drawn book covers of some of our favorite books floating in the sky above the mountains. Among this pantheon of our favorites, she had drawn a book cover that featured what she knows I have chosen as the title for the book I’m about to begin: The Water Bearers.
What an act of faith. So today will be the day. Thank you, dear girl, for the nudge; I needed it.