Time To Toast!

Everything is moving so fast I hardly know what I am toasting anymore. Late, late Thursday night I finished my first novel. Well, as finished as a writing can be, which is to say, I stopped rewriting and said, "That's it. I'm done." Because honestly I could keep rewriting for the next 50 years, but at some point I am just replacing one set of words with another that may or may not be any better. For better or worse, I am done.

Friday, I began putting together the query letters I have been working on in between writing the novel, and sent out my first three. Time to celebrate. I put champagne on ice, called all the people who have been rooting for me to tell them. And then, before I could drink it, two of those agents wrote back asking for partials.

I want to celebrate, but suddenly the fear sets in. So I can write a query. Yay for me. But a query only gets my feet in the door. The question still hangs in the air, can I write? Sometimes I read it and I think, this isn't half-bad. I've read much worse. And other times I think, this seems so tired and old.

I am throwing it out there. I will wait and see what happens. I have a few other agents I want to send it to, but at the end of that, if nothing comes, I don't know if I'll look for more, or just move on to something else. At the beginning of this journey my object was to write a book. I'd always said I would, I could, but I hadn't. I didn't want to be on my death-bed and wonder, could I have? So I did.

The rest: the queries and all that come after that: they are all just icing on the cake.

So for tonight, until the rejections begin flooding in, I am celebrating. I'm just not buying those stilettos yet.