Crossing Things Off My List

I have been wanting to submit my manuscript to an agent for awhile. I sent it off to a few publishing houses that accept unsolicited submissions earlier this year with no success, and I thought why not see if the agent route would work better for me? If I think my manuscript is worthy of publication, then shouldn't I think it is worthy of having someone other than me fight for it?

So I did my research and found an agent I am interested in and I have sent it off via cyberspace. I totally unduly stress myself out over these things . . . I want everything to be 1000% perfect and so I get all tweaked, and I am sure I annoy all of my friends and family. I received a very nice auto response saying:

"Thanks for your submission, if we want your stuff we'll let you know, if you don't hear from us in six weeks then go jump off a cliff."

. . . ok, that isn't really what it said.

I suppose I shall use the next six weeks to research other agents I feel might be a good fit for me, because the odds are that the first agent will say no . . . actually they won't even say it, they just won't ever email me back.

I realize these are the odds, but even so I will probably react like this at the end of six weeks when my email box is sad and lonely and empty:

Isn't this an awesome photo? It's one of my "sneak peeks" from the photo shoot the babies did with Marisa a few months ago. Doesn't Maddie look as if she should be sitting in the middle of war-torn Sarajevo or somewhere equally awful? But she's not. She's sitting on a trolley track in Glendale. I suppose as a mom I should look at this photo and say "awww poor baby," but I don't. I look at it and laugh hysterically.

Here is our sneak peek of James from the same session. Notice he is not screaming. He's just standing about looking beautiful. That's pretty much how James handles getting his picture taken . . . it's sort of like "well of course you are taking my picture, why wouldn't you?"

Agent submissions aside, I am horribly behind on the rest of my life due to this whole working for a living thing. If you are waiting for a package in the mail from me, I promise they are all going out Friday . . . Saturday at the latest. Really . . . I promise.