This Will Be A Day Long Remembered ...

The Offer of Representation constitutes a binding magical contract!

After a week of patiently waiting (that was funny to type!) for any other agents to come to their senses and offer to represent me, it was time to let my pseudo-agent know that I was all hers!  I think I let her know in a less creepy way than that, but, basically, all roadblocks were lifted.  Truthfully, I was all in the week before, regardless of what anyone else was willing to offer at that point.  I'm a big believer in loyalty.  I was ready to sign on with the agent that had seen the potential in my work and had already gone through a couple of rewrites to help make it shine.  And that agent was Laura Zats with Red Sofa Literary.

When I emailed Laura she offered to put my contract in the mail.  Imagining how uncomfortable it would be sleeping down at the curb under my mailbox the number of days it would take to receive the parcel, I kindly asked if the contract could be emailed.  By the end of the day I had it in hand.  That elusive contract I'd worked so many year (yes, you read that right ... years!) to procure was finally mine.  Mine all mine.  Wahhha wahhaa wahha ha ha ha.

Having already done my research on what to expect and not to expect in one of these agreements, everything appeared to be in good order so I put pen to paper and became a represented agent with Red Sofa Literary.  As soon as the ink dried the sky opened up and everything changed.  Birds sang a little more on key, sugar tasted just a little bit sweeter, blues were bluer, reds were ...

Actually, nothing at all happened.  Anticlimactic, yes?  But that's something I've learned in this process.  Some things take so long to happen, you actually become desensitized by their not happening!  Don't get me wrong, it was still an amazing moment and a monumental step, but it mostly just highlighted the next step.  And the one after that, and so on.  Getting published is a process.  A painstakingly slow process.

Now that I had an agent, there were going to be ... that's right ... more rewrites.  And more rewrites there were.  And should I be fortunate enough to have my manuscript picked up by a publisher, guess what they will want from me.  A lollipop?  No, silly.  More rewrites. Turns out, you don't write a book.  You write a book about a thousand times.  But with contract in hand and a talented and determined agent working on my behalf, maybe sometime this year I'll have the privilege of rewriting my manuscript yet again with the guidance of an editor at the publishing house that has bought my book.

Happy New Year everybody!