Long Time No See!

It may seem quiet here on the blog, but it's been a busy, busy couple of months for me.  Ideas for posts occasionally circle my brain, only to be swept away by something more immediate or exciting.  But there's good news: the year is still fresh, and my energy is getting back to where it was.

Timeline of Events:

28 November - Thanksgiving

29 November - Jillian gets on a plane bound for the UK

30 November - Jillian and Michelle are reunited in Oxford and a ten-day visit begins.

30 November to 9 December - Jillian and Michelle spend time hanging out at coffee shops (particularly Cafe Nero at Blackwells) reacquainting ourselves with our old haunts, watching Chuck, Farscape, Haven & Doctor Who, going to pantos, taking walks, writing, Christmas shopping (the glorious Scriptum on Turl Street), taking cold medicine, etc.

Highlight, 6 December - Jillian goes to London by herself as she unwittingly gave Michelle a cold.  Visited St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower, navigating the London Underground solo.  Not a small feat for one born and raised in a Midwestern state that has no subway system.

9 & 10 December - the weary traveler makes it back to Nebraska and drives from Omaha back to Lincoln.

11 December - Jillian's car battery decides it doesn't like the frigid weather and promptly dies in the driveway.

Highlight - Jillian starts looking for a new apartment for herself and Ninja the cat.

25 December - Christmas.

6 January 2014 - Jillian finds a lovely little place with a view of Nebraska's capital. 

18 - 21 January - Jillian and Ninja move house.  Ninja puts up a fight characteristic of, well, a highly skilled ninja.  

Since then, it's been a matter of unpacking, rearranging, realizing what kitchen utensils I need, what furniture is still in limbo, getting a cat to adapt to new surroundings without a basement to throw her into.  All the while I've been painfully aware that I've not sent queries out for my novel in a long time, and that I need to get that particular wheel moving again.  

Perhaps it's just taken this long to regain my strength, my mental resolve, and keep at bay all of those doubts and devil voices that like to me that querying is useless, that my novel is crap, that I don't have a strong presence online anyway so why bother.  When you're anxious person, this is the reality, and it's just not helpful.  It drives you away from your everyday writing, the heart-stories and creative activities that define your day, your sense of self.  I don't want to give it up or shrink away so easily this year.

I want this year to be about forging ahead and hesitating less.  Call it a resolution if you will - or perhaps solemn goal is a better term.  Whatever it is, querying is one of those stages in the life of a book that can't be bypassed or jumped over or TARDIS-ed into oblivion.  No, the Doctor isn't going to pull me out of this one.  I have to do it myself.  

So I sent three queries this morning.  At the very least, I hope I'm continuing to learn something about this process, to think of this as a project and an opportunity and a leap of faith.  I am simply starting down the corridor again, and knocking on the doors.  Some day one of them will open.

open doors by kuronakko

Folly

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 176:

folly

Folly is the lack of good sense, understanding or adequate foresight; an act of foolishness, or more specifically, a costly undertaking which results in embarrassing or ludicrous ruin.  This word is Middle English, which means it was borrowed from the Old French word folie, meaning "madness." (Oxford Dictionaries.)

The Fool, as seen on a tarot card, is about to fall step off the edge of a cliff.

I actually don't believe folly is all that bad - it is the state you start out in when embarking on a journey.  I've learned that I am still the fool when it comes to this trying-to-get-an-agent business.  The important thing is to realize that blunders will be made.  I will trip and fall several times.  I will have to go back and rewrite that one chapter I thought was perfect.  I will write stupid tweets and worry about what people are thinking, if anything at all.  Folly is a learning curve; I've learned that the Fool on the tarot card is represented as a perpetual youth... and aren't we all?  I don't mean perpetually young, but constantly learning.  How else can we learn but through trying and stumbling and getting scraped up... and picking ourselves up again?  

Embrace the fool.  He's really not that bad.  Or fatal.  Or stupid.  He just has convictions about things that haven't been (but need to be) tested.  He doesn't watch where he's going, but he'll soon learn his lesson.  I'd like to see him after he picks himself from tumbling off that cliff, dusting himself off, examining his bruises and looking up to see where he came from. "Well, that was dumb," he might say, "but I don't regret a moment of it."  

So... write like a fool to write better.  Laugh at yourself.  Move on.  Harbor no regrets.  I think I can handle that.