Biting My Nails

A little more than three years ago, before I lost my job and we moved to Colorado, I had been talking to a publisher about one of my novels.  They had asked to see the first three chapters of Without a Net.  Then my world crashed and I had to tell them that I was unable to follow through at that time.  It broke my heart to send that email, but my concerns at the time were much bigger – finding a job, moving my family across country, starting the new job, etc.

Three years, and I had not done any more not only with that particular novel, but in contacting that publisher again.  I was still writing, and I formed a writing group in my new town to keep me busy.  Day to day life has a way of passing by, and suddenly it isn’t months, it is years.

Last spring I dug out one of my more completed works and started putting some effort into getting it completed.  Fairest of the Faire is a romance set inside a Renaissance Fair, and in my mind, is one of the sweetest stories I’ve ever written.  I spent a month rewriting it and getting it where I wanted it, and in March I sent it out to be read by a group of 10 beta writers, one of whom is a professional editor.  I waited about 6 weeks, and got return comments from four people.  That was enough for me to work with, and I went back through the novel to make the suggested changes.

Then it sat.  I am paralyzed with the idea of trying to shop a finished manuscript around to potential publishers.  Yes, I know this means I’m not getting it published, and the worst they would do is say no, and blah blah blah.  But then I had a moment of clarity:  why not shop it back to the same publisher that had wanted to see Without a Net back in 2011?

I dug through my email and found the contact information, wrote a query, and sent it off.  I got a response the next day, asking to see the manuscript.  Of course,  I sent it to them immediately!  It has been two weeks, and I’ve been biting my nails.  Will they like it?  Will they want to publish it?

In the meantime, I need to keep myself busy.  Time to get back to Without a Net and get a decent story out of it.  I realized the other day that I’m allowing myself to be paralyzed by the size of the story I could tell about circus.  Back when I was teaching college students who were not native English speakers how to write essays, I always had to remind them to pare down their ideas, to make it something they could realistically work within a three-to-five-page assignment.  I need to take that same advice, and write a story that can fit in 90,000 words or less.

I know I can do it.  There’s no reason Without a Net can’t also be shopped to a publisher by the end of this year.