Right. So, remember when I said everything was happening so fast that I hadn’t yet had time to process it (i.e. Wednesday)? Well, yes, that’s still relevant in some ways. The fact that I went from zero to agent to submittable manuscript in basically two weeks has still given me a kind of reality whiplash from which I haven’t yet recovered. However, yesterday, when I was given the list of editors to whom the manuscript was going out, I started to feel a murmur. And then when I got the email that the phone calls from my agent had started; well, let’s just say I had to take a moment to regroup.
When I’m excited, when I’m nervous, when I’m feeling things with my entire body, I don’t sleep. Last night, I barely slept.
When you’re just starting out as a writer (or, as anyone in the arts, I guess), you have to lie to yourself. You have to tell yourself, “I’m going to get there. I’m going to finish this novel, then it’s going to be so good that I’m going to get an agent, and then it’s going to be so good that editors are going to read it and then they’re going to love it so much that they’re going to buy it. And I’m going to walk into a bookstore and I’m going to be there on the fiction table, and I’m going to watch a stranger walking out of the store with my book in his hands.” And then you have to believe it with everything you have in you. Because otherwise, if you really put into perspective how much of a shot in hell the whole thing is—and how, as you travel on in your “I must believe this” self-convincing spree, the chances of what you’re convincing yourself actually happening decreases even further—you’ll never work for it.
So, when lying to yourself to make sure you keep trying transitions into something that’s actually happening, step by step, you’re bound to be in disbelief for a while. But I’m glad understanding it’s reality is finally kicking in; even though the most important part of the process is still the one missing piece, this whole journey’s a hell of a lot more exciting when I’m feeling it screaming in my chest.
M
