hope springs eternal

Apparently my new query letter is a winner -- when I woke up this morning, I had an email from the agent asking to see the first fifty pages of my manuscript and a two-page synopsis!!! This merits the rare three-exclamation-point celebration!!! It totally made my day. I'm trying to keep myself grounded and remember that having an agent ask for a partial is not the same thing as getting an offer of representation, or selling the book, or hitting the New York Times bestseller list, or turning into J.K. Rowling -- but it's at least a sign that I can write a query letter that might, on a good day, intrigue an agent enough that she wants to see more of my work.

In fact, had that not happened, today would have pretty much totally sucked. Or maybe today pretty much sucked because it happened -- all I wanted to do was sit at home and write my synopsis (since my book is well-polished, but the last synopsis I wrote was six pages, and cutting a 400-page manuscript down to two pages is not trivial). Instead, I had to sit in either boring or annoying meetings most of the day, and the breaks I had were not long enough to recenter me. But I survived, left at 6:15, and made it home in good time. I took half an hour to empty the dishwasher, change into sweats, and reheat some of that delicious beef bourguignon, which I enjoyed before sitting down to write the synopsis.

Now, three hours later, I've sent the synopsis and the first fifty pages to the agent, and it's time to cross my fingers. It could take her weeks to get back to me on the partial, though, so I'm not holding my breath; instead, I need to decide who to send queries to next. The funny thing is that I sent to her partially because she was the only agent at the top of my list that didn't want a synopsis with the query letter -- and now this has forced me to write one, so I can't procrastinate on the other three or four people in my top bucket. I should go to bed, though -- it's enough to celebrate this for a day before I start thinking about all the other steps in this interminable process. Goodnight!