037 - Pay attention.

The agent giveth me hope... and the agent taketh it away. This morning I was elated to see that another agent wanted me to send a sample chapter, but I felt the impending hand of doom when she also stated that she wasn't sure if my book was right for her. She said she'd read it right away and get back to me. True to her word, within two hours my once-high-hopes were dashed. I would be crushed, but I have a lot of irons in the fire, and it's a very subjective business.

Not going to linger on it. In fact, I'm going to continue to make edits tonight, and hopefully print a hard copy so that I can read the whole thing through next week, one with all the changes incorporated into it. Yesterday I sent out 35 more queries, and received no rejection from the agency who requested the full. No news is good news... unless they tell you that no news is bad news. *pulls hair in frustration* There are about fifteen more agencies I will approach once I print the query letters out (snail mail only), and another twenty that I can contact once I write a synopsis... I'm really hung up on the synopsis but there's an agent that I really like on that list, so I need to do it for her... lol

I finally joined a writer's group (of sorts), a site called Absolute Write that I've been using to get agent information in cases where the agency doesn't appear to have a website. So far people have been friendly and I've run across a couple of interesting author websites. It's intimidating to read other people's work, because I have a tendency to make comparisons to my own writing. My writing tends to be pretty simple, no epic battles or complex worlds, mine's more relationship-based and internal. Thank god there's a market for that, and hopefully there's room in it for me!

...I don't know how many times I have to find myself in the middle of making dinner only to find that I'm missing a key ingredient before I start to pay attention to the frickin' recipe. I got Monterey Jack instead of Mozzarella... no big deal... but I totally overlooked the riccota. I don't know if this is going to work out or not, but there's an interesting substitute (no amounts specified so I winged it) of cream cheese, egg and parmesan. Dinner's in the oven now... we shall see. Casseroles tend to be pretty forgiving.

This week I've decided to test my willpower, and yeah--go ahead and laugh at how pathetic I am... I intended to cut back from three sodas a day, to one. I ended up cutting back from three to... two. Yes, it's still progress, but I didn't meet my goal. So this week I'm going to adhere to it, and I'm going to cook meals from Cook Yourself Thin, and I'm going to hop on the treadmill every day and burn at least 250 calories. If I don't see a difference this week, no matter where you live, you will hear my scream. I figure it's six days. If I can't last for six days then what does that say about me?

And you'll be happy to know that I survived the night, in fact, 30 minutes after finishing the movie I was in bed asleep. I am a badass! lol