CHOCOLATE-FUELLED THOUGHTS
Moral of the Story: Check Your Spam Folder
I’m pleased (honored, thrilled, happy dancing) to tell you that I have signed with a literary agent! Rachelle Gardner of Books & Such Literary Agency is now my representative to help me sell my stories to a publisher.
I know. I sit and blink a lot.
But, because it’s me, you know there’s a better story behind this. So here goes…
In terms of trying to get my story published, I was in the middle of Query Season. That’s where writers send a peppy email to agents and beg them to read their manuscript. I read that the average number of agents queried before getting an offer is 100. So I was settled in, prepared for the long haul. I had my spreadsheet, my “Novel & Short Story Writers’ Market 2017” index of agents, and my query, synopsis, and manuscript all set to go.
Meanwhile, my sister came to visit. We were shopping online late one night, as we do. And I’m just gonna go ahead and tell you the truth: we were buying underwear.
Oh, yeah.
I was having trouble signing in to a website and I pulled up my spam folder to hunt for a password reset email. Now, I check my spam folder absolutely never. Never. I know that’s dumb, especially when you’re hoping total strangers will email you and beg to read your manuscript. But that’s the type of rebellion I practice – small and usually insignificant.
Yet on this night, whilst purchasing underwear, I checked my spam folder.
Behold! There was an email from an agent! I did some sort of weird wiggle and a hop without actually standing up from the couch. After a lot of flailing, I managed to read the email and understood that she wanted to talk to me. About my words.
By some miracle, that little email only sat in my spam folder for 10 days before I found it. And it was a miracle. I hadn’t queried Rachelle’s agency yet. It was on my list to do the following week.
The whole thing still overwhelms me. Mostly because it feels like such a kindness of God. He doesn’t have to care about this tiny dream of mine. But I do know He is the giver of gifts and abilities, and I’m thrilled He has provided this opportunity for me to use these gifts of mine. So often I feel He has bigger fish to fry than my little stories. And yet… He puts little surprises in my spam folder.
Isn’t He good? And funny?
In case you’re wondering what comes next: Now we begin the hunt for a publisher. And it’s probably time for me to start tapping out the next story idea. Stay tuned!
Hypothetical Hats
I was recently interviewed by the SortaAwesome podcast about making time for your passion. The host, Megan, asked me how I make everything happen in a day, and I gave her a philosophical answer rather than a practical one. Because the truth is, nobody can or should duplicate my days or my life. It’s far more important that you understand the “why,” rather than how one single person does it. And yet, I can’t help but offer a few specific practicalities and more navel-gazing, just because…
I view my life and my roles in terms of “hats.” Unless you are Kate Middleton, hats are borderline “too much” on a good day. But wearing more than one at a time? Utterly ridiculous.
In the same way, I can’t do more than one thing well at a time. I can multi-task, sure, but it doesn’t mean I should. Because so many of my everyday jobs require full-time attention, I can’t make hard and fast rules about exactly how many hours a day I will wear which hat. And every day of our week is slightly different with co-ops, learning therapy, and general chaos. Instead, I give myself permission to move in and out of hats throughout the day, while still recognizing that I can only reasonably wear one hat at a time.
For instance – I wear my “homeschool teacher” hat from 9 to 12 in the morning. That’s when we buckle down and git’er done. We power through the math lessons, memorize Shakespeare, grade all the book work, and fall down the YouTube rabbit trails about past US presidents. I ignore my phone, ignore my to-do list (most of the time – what I’m saying is I TRY), and give my full attention to teaching.
When lunchtime arrives, not everyone is done with school. But my time of hard-core school focus is over. My kids carry on with their independent work and, while I’m available to answer quick questions, my role quickly moves into “homework supervisor,” not necessarily Teacher and Instructor. This means I can quit worrying about whether or not I understand the math lesson of the day and can switch my focus to some of my other jobs.
*Files mortar board up on the shelf until the next day.*
(On co-op days, picture me in a page boy cap, chauffeuring my little charges and demanding bigger tips.)
After lunch, I dole out some mom instructions and then we all buckle down to our independent work. I have independent work, too. This looks different depending on which project I’m currently embroiled in. Sometimes I don my online teacher hat (which looks a lot like a fairy godmother hat with a magic wand) and plow through some Brave Writer work or plan my co-op classes.
Other times, I’ve got my Regency bonnet tied under my chin and I’m flying through edits on my historical fiction.
Rest assured, I only write blog posts in a smoking jacket and fedora, so I don’t look ridiculous at all while typing this.
At the end of the afternoon, I’m in full-on chef and mom mode, pulling together dinner, supervising the last of the homework, admiring Lego creations, switching over laundry, hunting down that suspicious smell in the pantry, and pulling all the people and threads together from our day to join together over dinner and conversation.
Once the dinner time crush is over, sometimes I pull out another hat and get more work done, and other times I’m content to cram all the hats into the far reaches of my closet and rest my weary brain with a book or some Netflix.
Now here’s the important part: Mothering isn’t a hat. Neither is wife-ing. (It’s my blog, I can make it a word if I want to.) My people? They are my heart, the beat of my drum, thudding away all day long, all night. The interruptions are ever present, they thump-thump with alarming regularity. And that is as it should be. Hats fade in and out of style, but my people and my relationship with them are the most important. If any one hat gets too weighty, too onerous to wear, then we have to trim it or retire it. End of discussion.
I don’t get to unzip the Mom role or shimmy out of the Wife title. I wear them like a second skin. So when the interruptions come, which they will, I try to remember the difference between that which can be removed -a hat of questionable fashion- and that which makes up my whole. And then, with some prayer and some Jesus help, I choose to say yes, to take a deep breath and find the missing shoe, to kiss the scrape, and break up the fight. I do the Relationship first and always.
The rest is just headgear, y’all.
