An Irrational Sort of Hope

So, some stuff has happened in the past week.

As I was logging into my email account last Monday, I remember thinking that today was the day I would receive the response from the literary agent who was reading my book, and I wasn't feeling thrilled. Well it was the day, and it was a form rejection. It took her four months to respond, which might not be a long time for some agents but her average response time seems to be about two months or less. I was expecting at least some helpful criticism, but there was nothing. Just a form rejection. She at least acknowledged that it was a memoir, so it was her form rejection for memoir/nonfiction.

Anyway, it didn't get me down right away. I was still feeling a little cheery, like "time to send out more queries!" I used a new approach: personalizing the query to the agent. I sent out three on Monday. On Tuesday, I checked my email. Two form rejections. This is when I got frustrated. And I cursed the publishing gods and this maddening process of trying to get published. Trying to get published was even more maddening than the time I actually went crazy! I went home and took some zyprexa, as I was overstimulated. I went to sleep.

Wednesday was the day when new hope blossomed inside me. I went back to the writing forum I used to be on. I decided I would post my query there for feedback. But I needed 50 posts before I was permitted to. I just now got 50 posts today, right before I started writing this blog, but it said it might take up to an hour to register that I have 50 posts thus why I am taking a break and writing a blog entry. On Wednesday I remembered that my sister gave me advice about my query. The source of the advice is questionable, by that I mean I don't know if it came from her or from the spirits. See, my sister is more in touch with the spirits, like a hell of a lot more than I am. But I took the advice on this query, and added more to the query I was using. After all, it did get me a full request to begin with, so there must be something right about it. It might be that it's too short.

So I hold onto this hope. And right now all I have is hope. Luckily, all I really need is hope. I thought about it, and there are two things, which together mean I will eventually succeed at this: first off, the spirits have been pushing me to get my book published. Not just me, but my sister too. I was feeling this push earlier this year, but I was skeptical of what I was feeling. Then I talked to my sister, and she said she felt a push to push me to get published. I realized the push was real. And when you believe a feeling is real, that makes the feeling stronger, or so I've learned through experience. But anyway, that's the first thing, which in itself doesn't mean I will be published, but what it does mean is that the spirits know that I have the ability to succeed at this. The second thing is that I have honestly been doing the best I know how to do. I have been giving it my best effort, and I know the spirits wouldn't expect me to do any better than that. Therefore, I will succeed.