Awaken your Unstoppable Self

My unstoppable goal: For my hair to match my wine, apparently. Still a couple shades to go.

I don't know what your goal in life is. Maybe your goal is to have children - loving, balanced ones that later grow up to become Google CEO or President or Prime Minister. Or maybe loving and balanced ones. Maybe you want to connect with your husband/wife/child again. Maybe you want to slim down to that size ten you were in college, when you had your whole life ahead of you. Maybe you just want to read one book every summer. Maybe you want to design and build your own house, with all your quirky but loveable requirements satisfied (breakfast nook, etc. etc. etc.).

Mine: to publish my novel. I am fighting tooth and nail to be the best I can be in the literary world, and let me tell you, it is hard going. But it's so rewarding.

The reason why I'm doing this?

Because I was having a difficult year in 2010. I transferred offices and changed the workflow of my job in advertising, so the pace was faster and the competition for sales was fierce. The stress was constant. I worked long hours, endured a long daily commute, and found solace only in books. They were the only reason I got there and back. I was so unhappy that I needed a way to escape. The manuscripts I'd written in previous years had taken a backseat and were collecting dust - in folders, in binders, in drawers, shelves, and digital dust on my desktop - and I was so inspired by the books I read on the train that rescued me from all-out sleep-deprived zombie-ism that I felt it was time to take one of my manuscripts out again. So I took out Ashbourne Hauntings, which I started writing when I was 21 years old (and presumably finished when I was 22). Seven years it had been sitting, neglected.

I worked on it, editing, taking out one major character and developing the remaining ones, cutting a dozen pages, then twenty, then fifty, then building it back up with better, more compelling, page-turning stuff. I labored over it, until I thought it was ready to send out - once again - to agents.

About seven months later, I received my first request for a full manuscript. I seriously, never in my life, thought this would happen.

But it did.

Two months later, my second full mansucript request.

Both have passed, but who knows?

I've sent out another batch of ten queries to another ten new agents who are looking my kind of stuff. Who knows?

C'mon, Loyal Reader: let's awaken the unstoppable self within.

Enjoy your Saturday, all!