ARGH

I’m really beating myself up over this agent thing. Condensing my near 500 pages into a 5 page summary and a 5 sentence query is agony. Yeah, I’m not alone. I imagine most writers will concur. How does one abbreviate?

But I can figure that out. I hated writing book reports and analytic papers in school. I majored in English and usually did pretty well… so I think I can figure it out. The reduction part. The challenge is making it compelling.

I worked for an agency. For a couple months. But it was enough to know that interns like myself are the ones assigned to read queries. I wouldn’t want the younger version of me to be the one sifting through the slush pile trying to determine if my novel is worthy of a second look. I lacked perspective then. I was still full of hubris about my literary and historic knowledge. I was naïve… and probably ill qualified to be a sifter when the focus of my interning day was my own writing ambition and where am I going with the boys to lunch? And even better when that lunch was just a couple pints, leaving me with no clear path of cognition when we got back.

Okay. Not every agency is run the same way as the office on Dean Street. I shouldn’t forget the head of that agency liked my writing. He liked my story ideas… an opportunity I threw in the toilet because I got sidetracked by… what did I get sidetracked by? Community theater and other seemingly important melodrama I discovered on my return to Worcester.

But maybe that’s why this is so tough. Because I had opportunity at my fingertips… and I let it fall away. I think this is a second chance. Life is full of second chances. But as we get older, they aren’t as easy. Failure doesn’t seem so acceptable when there are bills to pay and retirement isn’t a far away unbelievable idea.

So I churned out a couple mindless pages tonight. I’ll come back to it with fresh eyes tomorrow. I’ll go for another lengthy walk to exhaust my limbs and peace out my brain with the iambic rhythm of my footsteps. I will get through this. And everything that seems a barrier or a challenge right now is simply going to make me think that much more about what to say. To compel me to go back and rewrite and rewrite so someone’s intern will go back and reread instead of going for a pint with the boys. Or at least wait five minutes before heading to the pub.