Here I sit, staring at the few files amid the pale, dusty valleys and craters of the moon. The sky is dark around us, and I feel it. A sudden, sinking feeling.
An impending doom hangs over me.
What I mean by all of this drama is that on the moonscape of my laptop, resides three files; A completely written novel of which I am quite proud to say I wrote from start to finish. One of impeccable and exquisite detail and formatted to most publishers’ manuscript requirements.
That other file?
So somewhere between delightful manuscript and written novel is this abomination which was sliced and re-edited from the above novel file. This was the first fifty pages of my story. I used this cut to get the formatting correct before I converted it into a PDF and sent it off.
So why that feeling of impending doom?
Well, as I wait patiently as I can, I am looking for anything I did wrong. Did I send the wrong file? Did I mistakenly change viewpoint? Did I send it unedited? Did I send the full novel? Did I send a blank PDF? Should I have broken it into chapters?
While all of this is going on in my head, I usually bury myself in work. Today at work, I’d honestly laugh aloud if we served more than fifty customers. It was slow. Nothing to distract me from myself, and nothing to distract me from the fact that tomorrow is two weeks since submission day zero. Two weeks left to simply toil and spin in circles in my writing chair until I try and move on to the next publisher.
HarperCollins is my dream publisher. They have many of my favorite properties and I really feel my novel would add well to their existing catalogue. That being said, am I what will fill that void? Only they know.
Luckily in a week’s time, I will be focused on building a house and all the fun that is going to come along with that. Also, I’ve buried myself deep into the documentary Making a Murderer, and well… Holy. Crap. Lastly, I’ve buried myself deep into a mobile game called Ingress which apparently has a huge following. It is a location-based game utilizing geotags for a portal system that you can hack into. Okay, I’ll level with you. I’m training for Pokemon GO!
I just… want to be, the very best.
Like no one ever was…
*Ahem* Do you think Nike, Google, Nintendo, and RedBull would sponsor a Pokemon Trainer?
Yeah… me either.