Tuesday, May 26, 2009

your body's like a narcotic

I'm super super exhausted. I managed to sleep almost the entire way from San Francisco to Detroit; with my hot-pink earplugs, my eyemask, and my matching neck pillow, I'm sure I looked frightful, but it succeeded in blocking out the world well enough that I could sleep effectively. It was still much too little sleep for my grown-up, responsible life; a sedan picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at the Ann Arbor office at 6:45am, which was ridiculously early. Worse, while my badge works on the interior doors, it doesn't work on the exterior ones, which means I couldn't get into the building. So, I dragged my bag around the corner to Starbucks, where I spent 25 minutes in the bathroom feeling like a vagrant while I changed clothes, brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, did my makeup, etc.

However, it was quite possibly the nicest Starbucks I've ever been in, and so I spent a relaxing hour and a half lounging in an overstuffed chair and catching up on work emails. I made it to the office by nine, where I was able to actually get in, and proceeded to slog the day away. After work, I have a fabulous dinner with Dave and Bethany; Dave is my boss and Bethany is out on maternity leave, but the three of us used to work pretty closely together, and so it was great to see them (and to eat some baby back ribs).

The other excitement of the day was that I talked to the agents who are interested in representing my work. I won't say anything specific here in case they stumble across this, but I will say that it's going to be an incredibly hard decision; I would be psyched regardless of whom I choose, and so I think it's going to come down to a sense of fate. But while I'm moaning about the difficulty of my choice, I recognize how incredibly lucky I am to have some extremely savvy and talented agents eager to represent my work.

The only downside is that while I was on the phone with one of them, I realized that the whole process up until now (writing the book, rewriting the book, writing query letters, researching agents, sending out material, etc.) was like a mountain that reached its peak at the moment that I was offered representation. But now that I've reached the peak, and am very close to attaining my goal of great representation, I can finally see the next mountain in the range -- and it's much bigger, deadlier, and harder to scale. Because now that I may have an agent, the next step is publication -- and it's filled with a completely different set of terrors.

No more dwelling tonight, though; I desperately need to sleep, since I owe the agents a decision by Friday and need my mind clear to consider it. Goodnight!

2 comments:

Craig F. said...

2, 3 or 6 in no particular order

Sara said...

omg, craig ferguson reads my blog!!!