Hello and happy Monday.
I’m writing today instead of Wednesday because many of us are about to unplug in order to spend time with family and/or friends for the holidays.
Before we disperse, I want to share the place I’m at with you, artistically, which is why I filmed the above video so you can meet me at this junction where I’m trying to write something new while promoting a new book. It’s a fortunate place to be working from but it’s also a real challenge, because the way I start new manuscripts is messy and unbalanced.
Always has been, and I fear it always will be.
This is a stage I get to with every manuscript that becomes a book, and also every manuscript that fails. I’ve just sent new material to my agent, and even though I’ve been working on this new project for a few months with great confidence and joy, the minute I pressed “send” I saw everything wrong with the first 50 pages, and regretted what I sent, and the fact that I sent it at all.
Classic.
I have done this with every new thing that I write, but normally, I let my ego override my doubts and wait for my agent to text me saying she had to drop her other clients’ projects because she can’t put my new work down.
Clearly I am growing as a person, because that’s not what I did this time. (Also, that scenario never plays out, but it’s fun to think it might.) This time, I texted her immediately to admit I’d sent her flawed material but would she mind reading the first two chapters to weigh in on the voice and world?
This is what happened after I sent that text to my agent. She called and asked me this:
