Sandra Gail Lambert

Novel update

 

As you know, I wrote the novel, I wrote the query letter, I wrote the friggin' synopsis.  There is a lovely chart of the agents that have received some combination of the above. 

And there has been some "interest."  (Yes, I know I'm using the passive voice all over the place here, but it helps to put a little distance between me and this weird emotional existence.  

So.  Now, I wait.  And write.  And wait.  And walk the dog, visit friends, and wait.  

P.S.  The photo is lifted from Moonrat's blog.     

Paynes Prairie as writing aide

La Chua Trail is only five miles from my house.  It's open most days, all day.  Each visit the place is stunning, always in a different way.  Today's trek was midsummer lush and lotus.  And purple spears of pickerel weed.  Immature night herons.  Fluff-necked adolescent gallinules. 

It took a couple of miles before the twisted-up, has-anyone-responded-to-my-queries-yet, I-could-check-my-email-on-the-phone-right-here anxiety unraveled.  But it did.  I felt it.  Right in that place behind my stomach and in front of my spine.  Whew.  

I think I'll leave a few notes around my house to remind me to get out there more often.  Feel free to nag me about it.     

Writing While Waiting

Here's an update on my writing life. 

I am having one, moving forward from the recently finished novel, doing all those things you're supposed to do.  But mostly I'm waiting.  A batch of query letters are out.  There has been some interest.  Which means a flurry of sending out what has been requested and now - more waiting. 

Each time the computer dings that a new message has arrived, I scurry to open it.  If the internet connection is wonky, I scream things.  Bad things.  Today my cell phone rang.  It was an area code I didn't recognize.  I thought, this might be it.  It wasn't.  

Does anxious heart racing count as aerobic exercise?

   

Limbo

So, you know, that writing thing.  It seems I don't do that anymore,  

This is not the complete truth.  I do stare at my query letter drafts and sometimes change an indefinite article to a definite one.  Sometimes I change it back.  

 

My writing brain - on anxiety

Maybe I'm the only one.  Maybe other writers don't have twisted, folded all over and through itself anxiety. 

For instance - maybe they don't have a morning of writing where things went quite well, where the chapter hardly needed much revision at all and so they've moved way ahead of schedule on completing their novel, where all this smooshy feel good stuff is followed by full-body anxiety because they don't have any friggin' idea about what to write next, after the novel is done.  In fact, (they probably don't think) the best idea is to slow down, not to finish the book too soon, maybe ever.