It is as I feared... someone showing interest in my manuscript is somehow more terrifying than no one having any interest at all... and at the same time, it isn't. *sigh* I wouldn't feel this way if I had just a scrap of firm footing, an agent telling me that it'll be alright, things are going your way... oh, wait, that's what I'm doing, trying to secure an agent so that I have one to tell me these things... which is why I'm pacing now... because an agent has my ms....
On the upside, in a strange way, it doesn't matter if THIS agent turns out to be THE agent (although he's been in the biz a good while and I'm sure I could learn oodles from him just through osmosis) because just the fact that AN agent wanted to read my entire ms validates my ms. Which I needed right now. Life has been wildly crazy, and not always in a good way, or even a 'well, I could write about it' way, and my writing had sort of stalled, not because I'd stopped but because it had reached a point where I really needed some sort of sign that I was doing SOMETHING right, even if it wasn't the something that was going to be my breakout ms.
Now I'm assured that it'll be alright. Even if this one agent doesn't turn out to be MY agent, he's someone I'm proud to say that I intrigued, even if just for the evening. Which tells me that I'm doing something right. Which is a pretty darn good feeling for a girl when the rest of her little orbit has been slung into the asteroid belt...
To all you other writers out there: It'll be alright! It will all work out!
And to celebrate, I've thrown in a random photo of me conquering a much more literal challenge... Okay, so I'm not actually hanging on for dear life, but like I could pass up that kind of chance to cheese?
How exciting for you to have an agent looking at your work! Congrats! Do you mind if I ask how long you'd been querying for that ms before you got request? The first line from your other blog post was pretty funny as well and I would definitly keep reading...
ReplyDeleteAlissa, I had actually only queried three agents with that ms! One said no immediately, the one was interested, and I've still never heard from the third so I'm assuming it's a no. The interested agent ended up passing but he actually wrote out a response saying that he 'waffled' over it, and in the end was swayed by the fact that 1) he waffled at all, rather than leaping on it and 2) he has a client who is currently working on something at least along the same lines. But he was very kind and encouraging and had good things to say about the ms, which involved the words 'smart and commercial' so I'm excited. I've sent out six more queries and haven't heard from any of them yet. But we'll see!
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