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May 31, 2005
Literary agents and Boy Scout camp and stress, oh my!
From Alesia, back hard at work
Taking a brief break from rewriting the ending of a book from something that sucked hugely to something that actually . . . um, makes SENSE in the story, to write about stress from two opposite perspectives.
From Boy Scout camp (7:30 a.m.) to literary agents (5 pm), the day was a roller coaster . . .
First, there was Day One of camp, to which Darling Son needed to be driven 45 minutes in the pouring rain (yes, that’s 1 ½ hours roundtrip) to a camp that had no actual buildings within which the boys could, you know, DRY OFF. But all of his friends were there, so of course he wanted to stay.
In the rain.
With the potential of (I found out later) actual archery. And BB GUN SHOOTING. He did not, you’ll be relieved to know, put his eye out, says me, the woman who watches A CHRISTMAS STORY every year. He did, however, manage to win me the golden ring of a phone call from the first aid tent:
Her: Darling Son’s Mom? (You lose all other identity when you have kids, trust me)
Me: Yes? [trying not to freak out on phone]
Her: Your son got bitten by something, and his foot and, well, his entire ankle are ballooning up kind of hugely.
Me: Something? Define SOMETHING, Please. (AS IN: Are we talking mosquito, any, tarantula, or RATTLE FREAKING SNAKE? This is Florida, after all, home of “everything icky that could kill you and probably will”) Also, please define HUGELY.
Her: We don’t know.
Me: His dad is on the way and should be there in 5 minutes.
The opposite side of stress was my phone call with my darling agent, who I’ll just call “Steve.” I was freaking out over a few issues this morning and had e-mailed him (we won’t mention the tense phone call I made last week from my retreat, where I was standing on a bluff in the middle of a herd of deer expressing my thoughts . . . loudly)
Me: This is a stressful industry.
Steve: Yes, it is.
Me: I --[insert boring crabbing about possible toilet-flushing noises of career sinking here]
Steve: No, you’re wonderful. You – [insert wise advice about taking the long view and patience and successes to date here]
By the time we hung up, I felt a zillion times better. (The two telephone calls I’d had with good friends helped a lot, too.) The moral of the story: Publishing is hard work and a tough business; I wouldn’t want to try it without an agent who believes in me and my writing so much.
Second moral: when you send your kids to day camp, stock up on Benadryl.
Hugs,
Alesia, mostly de-stressed
ps The cover art still isn't up, but check out the cool pre-release buzz NICE GIRLS FINISH FIRST is getting at Barnes and Noble.com!!
Posted by Alesia at 6:07 PM
