So, I finally received a response from the agent who was looking at my full manuscript. I have struck out again! But in the way rejections go - it was a GOOD rejection. She suggested I submit to another agent.
This always makes me think when my writer friends and I talk about good rejections. Oxymoron-land here we come. It's a rejection, negativity inherently in the word's meaning. Yet we have to modify the word rejection with good or bad. I think it's our way of protecting ourselves from the horrid things rejections can do to writers. A rejection is like a drop of acid - it eats away at you, add a new drop and the deterioration accelerates. So we need to dilute the acid to save our souls from being eaten away too quickly, our muses from drowning in the vile stuff, and our drive to write from disintegrating. That is why the rejection needs to be modified with good once in a while, otherwise there would be no writers left. =P
Fun fun - the psychology of writers could be a study in and of itself.
With that said, I got a GOOD rejection because of the recommendation to send a query to another agent. Which I will do next week, along with queries to at least two more agents. One of these days my itch to send things out in threes because I think it's good luck will pay off. Really. I hope. Maybe...
*fights off the pessimism trying to burn a hole through her psyche*
Did I mention this was rambling blog day?
Waiting - I used this in my last blog title, and in this one. Kind of funny when I think of it. I have been revising a short story, "This Is Where I Stand". I started revisions just after my last blog post, and it is in great need of dialogue fixes and rhetorical question scrubbing, among other things. But one of my themes throughout the story is the repetitiveness of waiting - my main character is a Queen in Waiting (not a Princess, she will succeed the Queen because all the female warriors battled to see who would be the Queen in Waiting, and dear Zenya won). For example, here she is at a meeting with the current Queen: "She raises an eyebrow, but waits for me to continue. Now she's doing the waiting, but it's not the same. She's waiting for me to speak, waiting for the silence to break, waiting for her own death." The funny thing is, I forgot I had this repetitiveness with waiting until I started revising, so the title for my last blog entry was unintentional.
What does all this mean? Nothing really. I just think it's interesting how some things seem to converge - like I think about something and then that same word or subject is heard in a song on the radio. As if the universe bends to certain ideas, thoughts, or words at a given moment - as if coincidence wasn't really just coincidental, but certain things are more likely to happen at certain times so that same thing happens in many instances at that moment or over a short period.
I know, that doesn't make sense. Okay, it makes sense to me. But I doubt it makes much sense to anyone else.
What does this have to do with writing? Ha! I can actually explain that. You just thought I was speaking nonsense for the hell of it. Maybe I was and just decided to connect it to my writing - you'll never know! Anyway, when I'm writing, and especially when I write a scene I think turned out great, I wonder if it would have turned out different if I would have written it at any other time. When characters do things I don't expect, I think that just maybe this wouldn't have happened, something else would have resulted, if I wrote that scene or story at another point in time. The universe bends my writing to that point in time, just like other occurrences, so when I write something is just as important for the outcome as how I write it.
Well, I guess my craziness should be wrapped up. The universe just told me to go to bed by having the last lightbulb in the room burn out. Damn universe.
Happy writing (and delusions) to all!
