And the winner is...

...not me.

Ha! Fooled ya!

I'm pretty sure in my last entry I talked about a contest I was entering. I can't be sure that was my last entry, and at this point I'm entirely too lazy to go and check, so work with me here, k? So this contest was one I had been planning on entering for months. I wanted to have my book finished and polished by the time I entered, because CLEARLY this was THE ONE that was going to lead me to my agent and a book deal and publication and possibly a hot tub. With jello. Not a hot tub full of jello. A hot tub in which jello could be eaten. From a bowl. With a spoon. Or a fork, if you're weird.

Wow, that derailed rather quickly.

Soooo, the contest didn't turn out exactly how I had planned. I prepared for the blog pitch, my 35 delicious word morsels to whet the appetite of any avid reader. Surely it would stand out enough to be in the top 50. Well. Not so much. They even expanded to the top 56, and still no dice. I think there were upwards of 300 entries though. I tell myself I was number 57. If you know better, don't tell me. Let me just...imagine. Anyway.

Last Friday was the Twitter pitch party. And boy, did I warm up my thumbs for that one. I had to work, but every break I got I was on that phone. I had some saved pitches I had worked on, and made some up when Twitter stopped letting me use the same ones. (Please, I was not spamming, Twitter. Have a heart!) I pitched and I pitched and I retweeted for others and I pitched some more. Two times an hour from 8am until almost 6pm. And...

Nada. Zero. Goosegg.

Well, that's not true. A couple likes from other writers, some retweets, and a few new followers. Made some good connections, which I love. So I don't consider it a waste. Not at all.

It would have been easy to feel super defeated after all of that. I was texting with a writer friend and she was definitely feeling the defeat, the hopelessness, the fatigue. And I really was too. I had thankfully already made dinner plans, otherwise I thought it would have been a lovely evening to stay home and mope.

But I didn't. And I worked during the weekend to write the evil synopsis. And researched agents. And lamented over the fact that they are all looking for something different in a submission. And then pushed up my sleeves and began preparing individual queries for each agent I was hoping to query. And I sent out some queries. And now I wait. And while I wait, I will work. Work on researching more agents in case it's a 'nah' from all the ones I sent out. Work on my next project. Work on things unrelated to writing, because we all need a break from time to time.

And hope.