Currently Playing: Black Veil Brides, Devil’s Choir (on repeat)

I have finished my second manuscript—the first that will see the light of day—and as I re-read it for the hundredth time I’m still stunned that I actually wrote these pages. I can’t believe I sat in Cathy Day’s (http://cathyday.com/) novel writing class a year and a half ago and, from the depths of my mind, created these characters and the world of Tiger, Tiger.

I. Cannot. Believe. It.

It’s far from being perfect, every read through I find something that could still use more polishing and tinkering, but at this point every time I try to fix it I make it worse. And if I learned nothing else through four and a half years of college writing courses, author interviews, and literary agent blog posts it’s that this is actually a good thing. I’ve reached the limits of my current skills and it’s time to ask someone else to lend their talents and skills to this manuscript.

You know, writers like to think the blank page is scary, but the terrifying part has only just begun. After months of writing, editing, crying, screaming, and moping it’s time to send my baby out into the world. The query letters are written, months of combing through agents via social networking and google searches have finally come to a head. I can’t put it off any longer. If I want even a chance of making some kind of living off my imagination, other eyes must see it. Fortune favors the bold, right?
I haven’t slept more than three or four hours a night since I wrote my first query. I’ve gone over those eight letters four and five times, re-read the submission guidelines, picked up every book I could get my hands on that felt like it fit with the world and characters I created.

I Am Terrified.

I know agents aren’t big scary creatures. I talk to them on twitter and I’ve met a few at the Midwest Writers Conference (http://www.midwestwriters.org/). They’re good people who love reading and writing just as much as I do, hence their occupation.

I’ve been telling myself for a year to brace for form rejections and, really, I thought I was ready. But now the time is here to send my manuscript into the world, as prepared as my beta readers and I can make it, and I’m not ready at all for that rejection. I could cry just thinking about it.

All those pesky “what-ifs” I could shoo away while immersed in the world are now coming up hard and fast. It’s time to take a critical business eye to my work; is it saleable? What audience am I aiming for? What genre? What sub-genre? Are these first ten pages good enough to hook?

A lot of the agent profiles I looked at said they were looking for “excellent” writing, “wonderful” worlds, “endearing and complex” characters. Their Bestsellers are listed, their authors and all their awards are proudly displayed.

And then there’s me.

This is my first novel. I don’t have any awards. The only things I’ve submitted were three poems to Ball State’s Broken Plate magazine and received a polite form rejection for all of them. Is my writing excellent? Is my world developed enough? Are there too many details? Not enough? Does my character properly show off her many sides or is she only one dimension?

I don’t know if I have the ego to handle eight and more form rejections for something I’ve spent two years pouring blood, sweat, and tears into.