So I’ve been taking the latest rejection of my nonfiction manuscript as a redirection, and I’m having a jolly time writing humorous fiction. I sit on my couch and giggle. Really, I have to be careful I don’t make myself spew coffee from my nose.
I know, I know. I’m clearly too easily entertained. Or possibly simpleminded.
Just because the book tickles me, doesn’t mean the rest of the world will think it’s any better than toilet paper.
Seeing as how I’m devoting a huge amount of time to this novel, I figure I better get some feedback. I enter the first few pages in a contest and, glory be, I make the finals.
Better yet, my judges admit to laughing. So there. I’m not a half-baked, cackling moron after all. Well, not totally.
I take my feedback, tidy up the first chapter, and send it off to another contest. This one bigger yet. Then I wait.
In the meantime, I don’t forget about my dog book, I just let it sit while I write the novel.
A few months later, I go to a writers conference. This gives me a chance to get my nonfiction book proposal—I’m titling it Surviving Henry: Trial by Dog—into the hands of two other agents through a pre-conference submission system.
You know the routine—send, pray, wait. This time my prayer is that God will give me specific guidance on what I need to be writing, and as always, I ask him to tell me whether to keep going down the writing path.
When I get to the conference and get my submissions back from the agents, one says it’s great writing but she doesn’t know where she can sell it. Then she says I ought to write fiction. Hmm, where have I heard that before?
The other agent, who likes to represent nonfiction, loves my dog-book proposal and wants to discuss it with me. (Ha. Take that, Cat Guy!) Though I’ve never met this agent before, he seems like a neat guy, and I’m immediately comfortable with him. And he just happens to be the agent for a current NY Times bestseller. Yowza.
We have a great chat.
We might just be heading for that agent/client relationship.
Stay tuned.