Be Happy, Positive, Grateful, and Optimistic…I Will Get An Agent!- August 16, 2010

Happy Monday!

So this weekend was emotionally taxing to say the least. On Friday we had Mike’s grandma’s funeral, and then Saturday was Darren’s. And even though we ended up not making it to Darren’s, it weighed heavy on both of our minds, nonetheless.

By late Saturday afternoon, I found myself lying on my bed finishing Mennonite In A Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen. I had started the book a few weeks ago, but with everything going on, I had a hard time finding the time to finish it. However, after cleaning the house, doing laundry, and waiting for Mike to come in and shower so we could go to dinner, it was either watch Pauly D and The Situation reruns for like the fifth time, or curl up with my blankey and a book. And since I was fist-pumped, MVP’d, and grenaded out, I chose the latter, allowing me to go back to my list (Number 4—Read more; write every day).

For those of you who have not read the book, it’s a memoir about a woman whose husband leaves her for a guy he meets on Gay.com, and her choice to go back home to spend time with her Mennonite family. If you’re jumping up and racing to the bookstore to get all the juicy details of her husband rolling out for a dude, let me stop you right now. Though that’s a part of her story, it’s a very minute part of it. What Rhoda does splendidly is give us a sneak peek into a religion and culture I know I wasn’t hip to. She shares fascinating, and often times hilarious, childhood memories, Mennonite beliefs, stories of her rebellion against the religion and all that it represents, and then offers up this underlying hope that in the face of adversity there is good, and even when something may not be right for us, we can still learn from it. And on Saturday after another week of bad news, that ray of hope and optimism really hit the spot.

I finished the book feeling slightly renewed. I got up, went into my writing room, found an index card, and wrote on it: “Be happy, be positive, grateful, and optimistic. I will get an agent.” And then I walked into the bathroom and stuck it on the mirror. I looked at it for a moment, feeling strongly that if I wrote it, read it, and said it out loud, I would believe it. So that’s exactly what I did. I stood in my bathroom reading it out loud over and over again, as if chanting a well-known ancient proverb. As I opened the bathroom door, walked out, and looked down at Hershe (my doggie) who was lying there waiting on me to exit, I smiled, because I know in my heart I do believe. I really do.

Last week I responded to Lauren’s email (New York Times bestselling author Lauren) thanking her for taking the time to respond to me, and then asking her if she really thought I needed to add a sentence about myself to my query letter since I don’t have any prior writing credit. I told her that I’ve done a lot of research and from everything that I’ve read, I determined the literary golden rule is, if you have nothing substantial to say (aka: writing credit, a degree from Yale or Harvard, a law degree, or a secret handshake), say nothing at all.

Lauren wrote back agreeing with me. She confirmed that if I have no writing credit not to say anything, but that she forgot I had no writing credit due to the proficiency of my query letter. And no I’m not paying her to say these things to me…

I realized a couple of things last week about this process and about myself. One is that I never settled with my query letter. I have reworked it, and reworked it, and reworked it. And even though I had a very tight schedule mapped out for my summer regarding submissions, getting an agent, and starting my new book, I put that all aside and focused on getting this letter right. I cut out sentences I loved. I cut out whole paragraphs for that matter. I sent it out to a handful of people to critique, and waited patiently for them to get back with me, and I don’t do patience very well. I sat on it. I took time to think about if it was the best it could be, and then went back to it and worked it again. I put myself out there, emailing an author, not sure she would even give me the time of day. And I waited some more. But through all of this I realized I believed in me. I am a writer, and I wrote a story that’s relatable, funny, touching, and good. It’s really good. And there’s an agent out there who will think so too.

Last night before bed while Mike was in the bathroom brushing his pearly whites, I enthusiastically handed him a blank index card and told him to start it like I had started mine, but then to add whatever he wanted to the end. So he finished brushing, spit, rinsed his mouth out, grabbed the Sharpie and wrote, “Be happy, be positive, grateful, and optimistic. I will get to the gym every day.” As he was writing I was staring at his face and could see the glimmer of not only excitement, but confidence in his eyes. He put the top back on the Sharpie, I took the card and placed it at the top of the bathroom mirror. And we both stood there looking at our hopes and desires staring back at us in the mirror. And then we looked over at each other and smiled.

We can do anything we want to do, and we will… one index card at a time.

Believe.