keep the faith

My horoscope for today pretty much sums it up: "Your key planet Mercury is up against a formidable adversary today as it squares powerful Pluto. You may have shared an idea or started a project in the past few days, yet now you might feel as if your task is more challenging than you thought. Nevertheless, you feel unstoppable and aren't in the mood to negotiate. But your uncharacteristic aggression can create more problems than you realize. Take several deep breaths and think your next steps through before you swing into action."

As I've hinted already, I'm entering a workaholic mode and am already feeling like the wine bus on Saturday is going to be one glorious last hurrah before I barricade myself for the next few months/years. The last bit of disappointment over not selling my second book is slowly leaching out of my system; similar to the first book, the initial months were the hardest (full of despair and bleak thoughts and wanting to pull the covers over my head), then I went through a period of depressed resignation (not helped in this instance by my ulcer friend), and now I'm in the fired-up 'let's try this again' mood in which I want to write something amazing and take over the world. I can't help but think of Chumbawamba in this instance, although I wish that I hadn't. Granted, there are still a few editors who still have it, but neither my agent nor I feel particularly optimistic about our prospects. Amusingly enough, Jenn had just gotten a rejection before I talked to her this morning; this rejection even praised my "assured and lyrical voice" and my "feisty heroine", but said that my writing reminds her too much of another author they're already publishing. Grr.

So, the end. Or rather, the beginning. Jenn and I had an excellent conversation, and while I'm still mulling over the exact path I want to take and the insane amount of work required to traverse it, I think both my heart and my gut are aligned on the path I need to take. All of my myriad talents make me a great test candidate for self-publishing at this stage of the industry -- I have the writing talent (award-winning stories that get rejected by editors because they don't have space on their lists, not because they hate my guts), I have the tech skills, and I have the marketing and business knowledge to take a stab at it without being completely clueless. It's just taken several months to get over the dream of a glorious three-book deal (which Jenn thought would happen; she was as surprised as I was that we didn't sell) and align myself to a new, different, riskier dream.

And that was the agent chat. We discussed more of the business and logistics end and I have some decisions to make about how I work with her and what I do first, but the main thing is that I'm moving forward on *something*. And I can't express how good that feels after several months of traveling about like I hadn't a care in the world, giving myself an ulcer over my disappointment, and letting my self-doubt consume me. So if I do go all crazy workaholic on you in the next few months, give me awhile before you stage an intervention; I need some work time for awhile to get my dreams back on track.

Post agent chat, I had to urgently deal with the last details of our trip to Napa on Saturday. That left me precious little time to eat lunch, so I grabbed a protein box from Starbucks (that sounds more ominous than it is -- I don't think it's human, but it does have an egg, some cheese, peanut butter, apples, grapes, and some sort of biscuity thing) on my way to my hair appointment with Susie. I went shorter than I have in ages; while it's still long enough to cover my collarbones, it's no longer long enough to cover my breasts, and I kept being surprised when I was playing with it tonight and my hand ran out of hair several inches sooner than it usually does. It looks great, though, and I'm excited to have cut my hair-drying time by at least a third. Post-Susie, I came home, did some more winery stuff, grabbed a v. late lunch/early dinner at Roam (burgers, yum), then came home and took a nap. It was absurdly hot in the city today, so hot that it was still 77 degrees when Terry and I went out later in the evening, which is almost unheard of.

Terry's footsteps coming up the stairs awoke me from my nap, and I sprang up all eager for our planned wine bar excursion, but she had been rearended on the freeway on the way home and was understandably shaken by that. Her car wasn't badly damaged, but she was feeling a bit of whiplash (my non-medical diagnosis; WebMD would probably tell her it was spinal cancer), so we hung out at home for awhile while she dealt with the insurance company. We still went out, though, and had a glass of wine at Ottimista Enoteca, conveniently (or dangerously) located two blocks from our house. The place was lovely, even if I did horrify the host by asking for ice; I wanted it for my water, but he clearly thought I was going to dump it in my lovely glass of montepulciano. Terry and I caught up over our wine (and I stopped at a glass even though I wanted a second -- there will be time enough for multiple glasses of wine, and that time is Saturday), then came home and watched last week's "Project Runway". She went to bed, I continued rereading the book I finished two years ago, and eventually decided I should go to bed rather than reading when I was no longer awake enough to think.

And so, goodnight -- tomorrow looks different than I had hoped it would six months ago, but I'm excited anyway. I should also take a brief moment to give a shout-out to my sister, whose birthday was today - yay! For the rest of you, you also get a yay, but without the exclamation point. Goodnight!