On writing. (Not scholarly.)

About a year ago, I told you I finished writing a novel.  It was something that had been in my head for a while, and totally different from my day job.  In my day job, everything is logical and cold.  I wrote a story about magic and emotions.  Probably a balance thing.  Part of my brain felt heavy, so I wrote something to put the other part back into whack.  And then after I finished the writing, the responsible part of my brain had to put it all aside for months when my day job got too busy.  (The academic year started up.)

I pulled out my novel again several months ago on an airplane, and I really liked it.  I polished up some parts.  I figured out how to twist the tone of the ending to be the conclusion I really wanted, and felt super proud about that.  I let a few family members read the book, and they also (said they) liked it and gave me some helpful suggestions.  I know Deborah liked it -- she read it twice for me, and spent hours on the phone with me talking about it.  Tim read it twice, too.  He has been really encouraging.

So now the next step.  I'd like to publish it, I think.  The next step is to attract the interest of a busy literary agent with a very brief email message.  I've written a draft of the very brief letter.  I've made a spreadsheet of ten agents who have sold books similar to mine that I have read and liked.  Only eight of them are accepting queries, and only four of them take email queries, which makes my list very very small.  So now the real step is to send the queries out and pull in the four rejections.  I wanted to do this before the school year started.  But the school year is upon us.

So why hold back?  Why not just send?

I asked a friend, Norma to read the book -- the first non-family member I have asked.  She read it quickly, and said she liked the first 2/3 of the book, but then three things happened that didn't make any sense to her.  She told me what they were, and all three are important to the story.  I've been mulling over in my head how to fix them -- how to add a few sentences here and there so that they don't catch any other poor unsuspecting reader by surprise.  And I'm feeling kind of discouraged, I guess.  Lazy, maybe.  That was the word that Norma used (there is a reason I asked her to please read it).  She said it seemed like I got lazy 2/3 of the way into the book and I didn't prepare her well enough for those three things.

I get papers rejected all the time in my day job.  I make mistakes.  Sometimes I make big mistakes.  I pick myself up off the floor and get back to work.

Why has it been so hard for me to send the emails to those four people?

I'm scared of them.

Also, I guess I don't want to send the queries out until the book is the very best that I can make it.  And it won't be the best that I can make it until I fix Norma's three things.  And the second one of them should be fixed with a few sentences in a particular scene, and the third will take more fixes in more scenes, but will follow if I can explain to the reader exponential growth (still promise it's nothing like my day job).  But I don't know how to fix the first.

And now that the academic year is upon us again, and I have to teach a class on some of that cold logical-ness on Monday morning at 9:00 am, and I haven't even printed up the syllabus yet.  I am out of time again, and totally terrified of my Monday 9am students, whoever they may be.

Reader, are the things that seem most important to you also things of fear?