Writing Update: Falling Forward

I was starting to think I wasn’t going to make it happen. I wrote down some writing goals for January at the top of the year and was looking sadly off track. My bucket of excuses felt valid, but they were still excuses.

The big one was that I wanted to start pitching. I have all that fear and anxiety of rejection but I had to face that I’m never going to know and never going to get the feedback to get better (and I do want to get better) if I don’t actually put my work out there.

On Sunday, I was planning to do some work. Or once I made the decision not to do that work, I was planning to take what I thought would be well-earned do-nothing and watch TV day.

But I don’t know folks, I woke up that morning wanting to get my shit together.

I spent all afternoon going over revision notes, starting to write in scene revisions, and finally, in the late evening, preparing and sending out five pitches to literary agents I’d researched. I’m going to keep revising a little more, but I don’t have major revisions I’m going through right now. We’ll deal with my panic that hit when I started musing that the first third or so of the book feels a little slow and I have no idea how to fix that later . . .

But if I’m going to fall, fall forward. Putting my story out there (obviously with the ideal intent of having something real happen with it) is going to help me learn how to be a better writer. And thicken up my skin, something I’m going to need if I want to be in this world.

It was amazing to feel like I was making tangible progress again for the first time in a couple of months. And a good reminder that I do have more time than I convince myself during busy seasons.

Here are my last sentences from this past week:

• 1/20: Not tonight. 
• 1/22: You’re moving too fast. 
• 1/23: “Don’t lock your knees,” she barked and I automatically sank forward on the balls of my feet.
• 1/24: It’s always next time.
• 1/25: I’m full of apologies today.
• 1/26: He’d been whispering to me about his first kiss with a girl in the grade above us and the feel of her chapped lips.
• 1/27: Instead, I let Luke rest at the front of my mind.

With Love,

Natalie