My secret

Dear People who love me, and also those of you who still follow this blog out of some sort of morbid curiosity,

Recently, I did something I have always wanted to do:  I finished.  I finished writing my novel.  Just putting that sentence down on the screen makes my heart get all swollen with pride and accomplishment.  I've wanted to write a novel, but I put it off (too busy), until I started reading the inside back covers of other novels with growing jealousy, realizing those writers who were getting their novels published were people just like me.  And then Letterpress wrote a blog post (long ago now) in which she said that sometimes, when we retire?  We don't really want to do all those things we've been waiting for retirement to do.  Like write a novel.  Only she said it much more eloquently.  And that chilled me enough that I finally sat down to get to work -- at least during Decembers and Junes, when I had a the time.  And this June, I decided I had taken enough time, and the story had been in my head long enough, and I was going to finish.  And I did.  I did!  I finished!

Reluctantly, possessively, I allowed the two people who love me the most in the whole world to read my novel:  my husband and my sister.  And because they love me most in the world, they liked it.  And even better, they both claimed they liked it in spite of the fact that they love me most in the world, and they thought it was Really Good.  And I should get it Published.  Which is exactly what they were supposed to say, and exactly why I let those two read it and not anyone else.

So then, my beloved novel tucked under my arm, I began to do some research into how to get a novel published, now that all the hard work of actually writing it was done.  And I feel like crying.

There is so much more work to do.

Apparently this hard thing that I did?  This writing of the novel?  Billions of people have done that.  And reputable literary agents get about 50 to 100 queries per day by people like me who now want to sell that novel.

But I have begun to gather my courage around me, and I have written about seven drafts of a query letter, and one draft of a synopsis, and I have even given the precious novel to the two more people who love me next best in the whole world:  my mother and my blunt sister, to see if they like it.  But in two weeks, my mother has not touched the file, and it occurred to me that, realistically, she never will read it unless it actually gets published.  (She does not understand that this is like another grandbaby, this project.  And, yes, she would be thoroughly scandalized by that last sentence, as she should be, if she bothers to read my blog.)  And the more blunt sister has not yet opened the book to read it, since I just mailed it to her last night.

But the other sister and the husband have now read drafts of my query, as well.  And the helpful sister wants to run it by her writer friend and another friend who is well-read in my genre, for additional feedback, and after reading about how hard it is to actually sell a novel, I want all the feedback I can get.

Except.

Except that these people who my sister knows, who would be very helpful, live 3000 miles away where my sister lives.  I could really use someone local to help me out.  But I don't know if my neighbors have ever written a novel before.  I've never even talked about taste in books with my neighbors.  These people who read books like mine?  I don't know where these people live.  I could use the help  of a supportive writing group.  But I don't know how to find one.  Or build one, whatever.  And I am afraid to gather my neighbors and tell them I have done this thing:  I have finished writing a novel.  Because the words that make up the novel?  Those are my words.  My ideas.  My feelings.  I put myself all the way through that novel.  And they may not like it.

And finally, just today, one of the blogs that I read had a long post about how important it is to find "mentors", which is code in my profession for "people to explain what is really going on".  And I think that is true here, in this weird world I have entered by this weird thing I have done (writing a novel).  But in my professional career, I know who to ask.  Not true here.

Oh, my readers who have already finished writing a novel (and I know there are at least three of you out there):  I now understand much more what you have been through, and I commiserate.