Sometimes it take a frying pan to get things through my head

For as long as I can remember, it's been my dream to be a published author. I've always loved reading and writing, and I'm sure it helped that my dad loved both as well. I had a lot of other dreams when I was a child, of course, like being the first female president of the United States of America. But my dreams of being an author never faltered. They got pushed to the side sometimes, but they never really went away, just hovered in the background waiting for me to remember.

I think a lot of people want to be authors when they're younger. They think of it as this glamorous lifestyle, flying off to grand locations for book tours and signings, movie deals, huge royalty checks, etc. I'm sure I only thought about those types of things when I was younger. After all, that's what being an author was to me.

I also know I didn't have any real understanding of what it took just to sit down and write a book. A few times over the years, a story idea would come to me and I'd just sit down and write. One time I wrote 10 chapters in just 3 days...then I never wrote another word of that book.

Almost 2 years ago, about 5 months after my dad passed away, I decided I needed to focus on one of my life goals, which was writing a whole book. I was tired of starting books and never finishing them and I needed to find the drive to get all the way through 100,000 words. I was pretty proud of myself when I finished that book, Just Average, in only 11 days. I couldn't understand why it took some authors years to write one book.

Then I started doing my research to figure out how to get it published. And that's when it all hit me. The query letter was the first step, and I have to say I tend to have a hard time getting past that step. I just want to write. I wish I could hire somebody to take care of all the rest of it for me. But still, I got a query letter written, then started researching agents to figure out who to send it to. I was super organized, with my Word file open where I had tables inserted to keep track of each agent, what type of material they represented, what their email addresses and websites were, the date I sent them a query and the date I received a reply.

And I sent out a whole 5 queries.

Impressive, right?

It wasn't fun. I didn't get those immediate emails, begging me to let them represent me, telling me they would fight with other agents for the pleasure. And it became increasingly clear to me that even if I managed to find an agent, it could be years before that agent sold my book to a publisher, if it ever happened at all.

So I told myself I needed to work on my query before I sent any more out, and I didn't touch it for a year. I discovered a funny thing about writing books. While you're writing it, you can think it's the best thing ever written. Set it aside for a month or two and then go back and read it. I discovered that Just Average was just that....average, if not horrible. The writing wasn't awful, the concept wasn't terrible, but it was so scattered and unorganized and there was really no easy way to fix that.

Instead of working on that book, or rewriting the query like I kept saying I was going to do, I started on my next book, Unrequited. I took some more time on this book....a whole 14 days. lol Oh, I actually took much longer in the grand scheme of things. I planned it out, did character sketches, wrote outlines, I even got 3x5 index cards and wrote down each plot point and played around with the order that I wanted everything. I decided that I could put my "super organizing skills" to use in writing, as long as I didn't get ahead of myself and start writing the book before it was planned out.

And really, Unrequited wasn't awful. It wasn't great. But it wasn't awful. I was extremely happy with it while I was writing it, of course, and even right after I got done. I spent over $80 printing and binding copies for friends to read so they could tell me what they thought. I wanted to get some editing in before I started on my query. But then....nothing. I did the same thing really. Put it away for a month or two and then when I went back, I realized how juvenile the writing sounded, how immature my main character was.

But it was a starting point. I think the scary process ahead of me was a bit too daunting and I just kept telling myself that I'd get to it eventually.

Well, it's been almost 2 years since I first started researching that process. And you know what? I'm ready now. I'm not walking into this blindly, and I'm not that same naive girl who dreamed about the glamorous life of an author. I realize it could take me years to get any interest in my work. I realize that even if I manage to get one book published, there's no guarantees that I'll ever publish another one. I also realize that any advance I get would be minimal at best, and I'll be lucky if the royalty checks are enough to keep me in Mountain Dew long enough to write my next book.

But you know what? I don't care. Now that I've accepted all of that, I'm ready to get back to the reason I wanted to be an author in the first place: I love to write. I just finished writing my 3rd book, Life After Death. I wrote this one in.....about 8 days. And I spent a whole 2 days editing it. (*Side note: I spent about 8 months on this book really. The idea came to me last spring, but the story wasn't completely there. So I let it marinate for awhile. Then spent a couple of days outlining it before I started writing.) And yes, for now, I'm pretty happy with it. Give me a month or two and we'll see if I still feel the same way. In any case, once I get some feedback from my test audience, and do my 2nd edit on it, I'll begin working on my query.

Until then, I'll keep writing. Because that's what I'm in this for. The writing.