Ah Well

So I just got the response from my snail-mail query from a while back. Form rejection.

Ah well.

However, I am not to be daunted. Tomorrow, I shall be sending out my next rejection...I mean...my next submission (heh)

I even have some imaginary logic to this next one. However, I am only going to share that logic if it proves out to be right. No need to look like an ass by claiming I know what I'm doing right now, after all.

Nanowriye Update

Well, as of this instant, I am 51,978 words behind where I should be. This is a big number. It is a very badly big number. However, I have worked out that if I write 7000 words/day from now on, then I'll catch up on March 12th. If I write 8000 words/day, then I'll catch up on February 14th.

However, what I think this illustrates to me is that once I stick to schedule, I really do need to stick to it. If I fall behind my schedule, then I slowly, slowly, lose morale, and that makes it even harder to get the requisite desire to catch up to where I should be. It's maddening, but I really do need to keep up with my writing, because I really do want to come out of this with some stuff that can be reworked in coming years to be viable send-out-to-agent novels.

Still heard nothing back on the query. Then again, we're not at 2 weeks yet. This past Friday, when I was sitting in my dorm room much of the day (I don't have Friday classes), I think I checked my mail 5 times, each time telling myself that I hadn't hit the 2-week mark yet and that I was being stupid. I also had a dream the other night, a very strange one. I dreamed that I dreamed that I dreamed that I got a positive response and told my mother about it.

I think this query letter thing is really starting to mess with my head.

the waiting game

I did something the other day that I've never done before. I don't regret it, I don't think it was a mistake...I'm just anxious as hell.

That's right. I sent in a query via snail-mail. I did the e-query thing last summer (uniform rejections). Some of them were quite speedy, the others took a little time. But there was somehow something less daunting about them. I don't know exactly why; maybe it's because an email is somehow inherently less daunting than that envelope waiting in the mailbox.

Anyway, I did it on Tuesday, and I have 2-3 weeks to wait, so I should find out before the end of the month. My expectations are not terribly high, but I can't give up hope. I know that when I see my shiny SASE sitting in my mailbox, I'll just leave it on my desk, unopened, for at least an hour or two, dreading what it might contain and hoping - hoping so much - that my fears will be put to rest.

Of course, there's the fear that I a) addressed the envelope wrong b) did something else stupid to make myself look like a moron c) am laughed at for being said moron....but at least I'll not know about these things, I'll just get a nice form-rejection (which I'm used to). I can pretend that it's for a simple and non-stupid reason, like....my writing sux.

If I were religious, I'd pray. As I'm not, I'll just cross fingers and toes (though they'll likely be quite cramped from staying like that for 2-3 weeks + the 2-3 weeks if (miraculously) I get asked to send chapters + the however long if (even more miraculously) I get asked to send the whole thing).

But I'm excited too. How could I not be? This feels somehow more real than the e-mail queries...stealing the manila envelopes from parent's house before coming back to school, buying stamps and #10 envelopes, printing all that stuff out on my printer, actually posting it...made me feel like a big-grown-up writer! (lol)


Oh, and as for nanowriye...yeah. 24,000 words out of about 50,000 that I should be at now (I think).

Oh dear.

*Dies*

Got the book today.

The one with my name on it.

I keep staring at it, like it's some real accomplishment.

If nothing else, it's incentive.

But I'm not thinking about incentive right. I'm thinking about how incredible it looks sitting here on my desk...something that I wrote that looks like a book.

*dies*

End of Week 1

Where I am: 25,518
Where I should be: 40,000 (as of Jan 8)


Damn.


Incidentally, classes start tomorrow, and I'm sitting up at 1:43 in the morning, because I'm on an awful sleep schedule and so I'm sure that I'll miss at least one of my two classes tomorrow.

What a wonderful start for the new semester!

Halfway through Week 1

Well, I'm only 11k words behind now.

That sounds so awful, I just want to curl up in a ball.

But I wrote 7k words today. That's good.

In order to get back on track, I skipped the part of the story that was giving me absolute hell and moved on to a bit that I thought would be easier to write. And it was. With me being so far behind, I really need easy writing right now.

I'm really hoping to catch up this weekend. Classes start on Monday, and I'd like to be caught up so that I'm not stressing myself about writing as well as new classes. Of course, if I do a NaNoWriDay next weekend, that could solve the problem once and for all.

I'm become a more regular reader of Miss Snark's blog (see link at side) and it just keeps planting this nagging little thought in my head that I should try to get published. And yes, I need a written, edited, GOOD story before I can do that. But fuck, I've been working on this stupid fucking story for six years.

I get this feeling every once in a while, usually accompanied by the feeling that I'm just not good enough and that I'll never get published, ever.

Then I tell myself that I'm not yet twenty. And I tell myself that I've submitted to about ten agents, total. And so I tell myself I'm being an idiot.

The thing is, though, that I can't not write. So even if I never, ever get published, I don't really think I'll ever stop writing.

Are we surprised?

So, we're at 6:44 p.m. of day 2 of nanowriye 2007.

How many words has Kate written?

0.

That's right. Not a one.

And yet I'm sitting here writing a blog entry rather than writing.

Can I convince myself to write? I hope so. I'm going in with my dad tomorrow to work, and so I'm probably not going to get much writing done.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I don't need to be behind quite this early!!

And it has begun!

Well, it's half-past ten on the first day of the new year, and I've yet to write a single word. I will, though, once I'm done writing this post. Honest.

I will not get behind on the very first day of NaNoWriYe. I refuse.