Friday Fricassee

You can imagine how much fun it is to send agent requests to authors.  I mean, the actual administration isn't fun -- it's tedious and annoying.  (Let's face it; there's nothing creative about looking up emails and sending countless messages that all say pretty much the same thing.)  But the RESPONSES from the authors are what makes this feel like I'm handing out sweets at a Christmas party.

Sometimes it's a simple, "Thank you so much!"  Four little words, imbued with the excitement of knowing that someone wants to see your work.

Sometimes it's an entire paragraph singing the praises of the blog and of Authoress herself.  And I just want to say--I appreciate the words of affirmation.  I really do.  It's my primary "love language" (fitting for a writer, yes?), so I feel the fuzzies on a deep level.

But but but--I also want to say this:  I wouldn't have sent a single email yesterday IF THE WRITING HADN'T BEEN SO STRONG.  You can find the best organized, most publicized, manned-by-amazing-agents contest out there; but if your writing is less than stellar* or not-quite-ready, then the awesomeness of the contest won't matter.

It's a team thing around here.  Or perhaps a circus.  (Which would make me the Ringleader.  I'm not sure how I feel about a top hat and a whip.)

At any rate, I should have paced myself better, instead of pushing through a lot of emails in the morning to get ahead of the game.  I started doing things like, oh, forgetting to include the agent's email address.  Oy.

So we're finished.  We're officially wrapped up, and I think it's safe to say that we'll do this all over again next year.

Once I stop twitching.

Thank you all for being wonderful!  And now I'm off to finish this oh-my-gosh-if-I-have-to-look-at-this-for-five-more-minutes-my-eyes-will-explode edit round.  Two chapters and a final sweep and it's done.  Which makes room for Christmas jollies this weekend.




* An agent actually said that about my writing, in a rejection email.  "Not, perhaps, stellar."  No, I didn't stab myself.  And she did laugh sheepishly about it later.  (Well, as much as one can laugh sheepishly in an email.)  Anyway, she was probably right.  She just might've, yanno, put it a different way.