3 posts tagged “book”

for someone else (i.e. me) to read, what would it be?

I'm loading up my massive booklist still and would love to make sure it's well-rounded.  Any kind of book, genre, etc. Just let me know.

And signed up for the upcoming Grub Street Muse & the Marketplace. Finally, I'll be getting off my rear and working far more directly to find an agent for my book. I shelled out the extra $120 to meet with an agent and get feedback. Maybe she'll be so excited about it that she'll buy it...well, that might not happen but a girl can hope! And I even added on the extra $50 for preferred seating at the lunch, hoping to get extra tips from the editor and agent that will be sitting at my table. I could tell Joe was choking at the cost of the one-day fee (two days would have been awesome but in the end I decided not to push it costwise), but he wants me off my ass as much as I do so he sucked it up like the awesome partner that he is.

That means I can no longer procrastinate. I have to get my proposal into final working order and submit it early so the agent can look it over before I show up. I can't let fear stop me any longer. Fear of success, oddly. If I sell the book I'll have to write it and promote it and while that's exactly what I want, there is something terribly frightening about the responsibility.

I need to be better about falling into the flow of the world as it tries to help me move forward in my writing. Good things happen to fall in my lap all the time and I need to revel in them more. I was recently asked to be a restaurant review columnist for a small local city paper. I'm very excited about that new opportunity--I've always wanted to branch out into more gastronomic writing. So suddenly I'm writing three columns, which is great credibility for me when it comes to my larger projects. When I initially finished my book proposal, it lacked that credibility in many ways. Now I have editing, writing and teaching experience under my belt. I felt guilty for not immediately going out to look for an agent but I realized that I didn't have any true writing credibility to prove that I knew what I was talking about, rather, I had a lot of research, but little applied proof. I hope that I'm ready now. I don't actually have much of a choice now, which is good. I'm always better with a deadline looming.

What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?

Find an agent for my book on creative writing techniques for writers in progress. The proposal is written--it just needs minor refinements. All the research for the book is done. Now I just need to write the cover letter and start sending it out. I've been sitting on my ass with this for far far too long.

Why am I so scared to follow through? Fear of success, I think. Seriously...I'm more worried about it selling than failing!!!