The next step

Photo by Nancy Brown

Sorry to have left you all in a lurch, but I had so much Pink Ribbon Pasta to eat all by myself after Valentine's Day!

Actually, I've been playing writer for the past few weeks.  Very exciting.  I've attended a creativity workshop at Central Carolina Community College's creative writing program in Pittsboro, NC, with young adult author John Bemis.  The last book of his Clockwork Dark trilogy, The White City, is due out this summer.  Very, very exciting.  John is a wonderful teacher, whose class blends just the right mixture of lecture, discussion, and practice.  I left energized to finish what I had started.

The next step was to get very serious about my dreadful query letter.  Regular followers know my feelings about this obstacle.  For new readers unfamiliar with the process, a query is a short business letter to a literary agent in which you try to sell your story.  Sounds simple, right?  A query is only 250 words long.  Two hundred and fifty of the most painful words I've ever had to write.  After searching around and trying various critique groups to help get it right, I finally found my niche on She Writes.

I joined the Query Critique Discussion Group on She Writes and submitted my query.  Within hours, the wonderful women in the group had poured out for me so much loving, constructive, valuable advice that I was beside myself.  Where had they been all my life?  These women are fabulous.  Thank you, ladies.  Thank you.

With the help of my She Writes friends, I was able to polish a query letter I could be proud of.  I hit the little send button on my email, fingers shaking, and waited for the swooshy sound it makes when my mail blasts off into cyber space.  Almost immediately, I felt a deep sense of pride in having taken that enormous step.  Followed quite resolutely by complete and utter nausea.

Ah, success!  It feels so good.