“She began her career as the assistant to the agent who represented Stephen King…”

That was in an agent bio I read yesterday.  Now, she certainly has the credentials to justify name dropping, but it made me laugh nonetheless. Because it made me think of The Office:  “I’m Dwight Schrute, Assistant Regional Manager” and Michael cutting in, “Assistant to the Regional Manager.”  Finding things to laugh about is how I cope with the stress of the agent hunt.  (Actually, it’s how I cope with most stressful things, but this post is not about other stressful things.)

A few of my readers might be writers, and so you’ll know well the process I’m about to describe — and may not have any interest in reliving it!  But for those of you who have ever wondered what happens after a writer has finished a novel and before it’s published, this is what we go through.

After months, or even years (I started my first draft in April, 2008, and finished it in August, 2009), writing, editing and polishing your novel, making it the best it can possibly be, you’ve then got to summarize the entire scope of this 100 thousand word manuscript into a measly 100 words. That’s right:  all you have to sell your novel to an agent, who then must try to sell your novel to a publisher, is 100 words.  And it’s not just your novel you’ve got to sell.  In much fewer than 100 words, you’ve also got to sell yourself as a marketable commodity even if you have zero publications to your name and little writing experience apart from a few short stories in college.  Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable than sending that off to agents whose clients include bestsellers and award winners.  You hit “send” and then are left to wonder whether your novel will sound like the stupidest, most trite bit of writing ever to appear in their inbox.  It’s enough to make you lose sleep, throw up everything you eat (if you can eat at all), chew your nails down to the quicks,or  get really drunk.  Certainly you will check your email compulsively every five minutes.

Fellow writers, this need not be! I have developed the perfect no-stress method for querying agents:

Wait until the last 2-4 weeks of your pregnancy. Querying agents is a great distraction from waiting for your water to break, and nesting the excitement of the impending birth of your child is a great distraction from awaiting replies. And then, when you do receive three rejection letters out of your first four queries, you can’t even really feel that disappointed, because you’ve got a little bundle of joy and unconditional love and acceptance on the way.  It’s an absolutely foolproof strategy, I tell you!

Okay, so it’s really only foolproof if you happen to be pregnant.  What if you don’t have the distraction of a coming baby while you’re in the querying process?  How do you cope with the inevitable rejection?  Because you will be rejected.  Maybe once. Maybe twice.  Maybe three times.  (I was, three times, in the space of 12 hours.)  Maybe more.  Almost certainly more, the more queries you send out.  (And the more agents you query, the more likely you are to find one who wants to represent you.)  How do you deal with the negative responses? Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook:  I am too heavy to sit in my husband’s lap.

This would be grounds for utter devastation, were it not for the fact that I am 38 1/2 weeks pregnant with a baby that will probably make headlines and retaining enough water to fill Lake Superior.   It’s easy to be amused about outweighing your husband (yes, I really do) when you know that in a few days, you’ll be well on your way back to the status quo.  (Oh yeah; in my failure to update this blog regularly, I might have neglected to mention that we’re going to induce labor next Monday, a week ahead of my due date.  Because of the Lake Superior and 19-pound baby issues.)

My poor husband must be given credit where credit is due; he tried to let me sit on his lap.

He was browsing the interwebs for new computer desks (for his upcoming new work-from-home job, which I also really need to post about!) and I wanted to look with him but didn’t want to walk the whole six feet over to my desk to drag my chair over, so I asked if I could sit in his lap, as I often do when we want to look at stuff together.  The dear man didn’t even cast a wary eye over my gargantuan belly before un-crossing his legs to accommodate me in his lap.

So, certainly he can’t be blamed for letting out a quiet, “Uffda!” when I sat on him. Or even for adding, “You are kind of heavy,” because he was amused, not critical; my vanity wasn’t the least bit wounded, though I feared his lap was. I asked if I should get up and get my chair.

“No,” he sort of gritted out, shaking his head with determination — like a weight-lifter asked by his spotter if he needs a hand with his bench press. “You’re fine.”

I was fine for about three minutes longer.

Really, it’s a testament to what a sweet man he is that he can tell his wife she’s squashing him (and that he’s looking forward to the return of the status quo, too) without making her cry. (Of course, considering I have only had one melt-down during my entire pregnancy, I’m starting to think that instead of becoming hormonally unhinged, I have developed the emotional control of a Vulcan.  Eat your heart out, Mr. Spock.  I only hope this continues through those harrowing weeks of learning to live with a newborn.)

I’ve always liked my husband a lot.  Duh.  That’s why I married him.  But pregnancy has made me like him even more.

Probably I shouldn’t have said that.  Undoubtedly, he’ll remind me of these words at some crucial juncture Monday when I’m at the brink of screaming at him never to touch me again.

It dawned on me this morning that now I’ve got a car again (should have thought of this last week, when I acquired said motor vehicle; but I am pregnant, ergo, a little bit slow), I don’t have to do my grocery shopping on the weekends, when Walmart is a circus. If my grocery budget would allow it, I’d shop anywhere but Walmart, because even on weekday mornings, when it’s not busy, Walmart can be extremely annoying because there are certain items I buy that they don’t sell (or, more annoying, used to sell, but don’t any longer — most recently, Wolf hot dog chili).

So, before Walmart, I ran in Kroger for the express purpose of buying Ragu 7 Herb Tomato pasta sauce. Two jars of it.

I came out with six jars.

Plus six more in other varieties.

And nine boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch…

…five boxes of Lucky Charms…

…four boxes of Barilla pasta…

…three 8-roll packs of Bounty paper towels…

…and two packages of Oscar Mayer hot dogs.

It’s like The Very Hungry Caterpillar Goes Grocery Shopping.

I couldn’t help myself! They were all items I buy regularly, and they were on sale cheaper than Walmart ever has them, and in stock, and–

Well, you know you may have gone a little beyond taking advantage of a good sale when the cashier remarks, “Not planning on going out for a while?”

I gave a sheepish laugh and indicated my baby belly. I should have told her I was preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse and asked if she was ready (because nothing says preparedness for zombie attack like weenies, cereal, pasta sauce, and paper towels). But I never think of these things in the moment. Even when I’m not pregnant.