good news!

So... I was trying to come up with an eloquent way of relaying this information to the world, but it's past midnight and I'm running on three hours of sleep and way too much chocolate, so my brain just isn't functioning. Therefore, all I can muster are the blunt facts.

Remember how I always drone on and on about being an aspiring writer? How I've written a novel, tried to market it to agents, given up, reworked it, started writing another novel, etc etc? Well, I got some pretty exciting news last week. But let me just rewind a little further so I can fill in any gaps first.

In April of 2009, I started writing a novel. By about October of that same year, I found out about a competition for aspiring writers where the winner walked away with a publishing contract, so I started working on my novel everyday and finished the first draft by December 22, 2009. The competition closed on the 31st, so I literally just made the deadline.

In April of 2010, I found out that I didn't win. Somehow, that wasn't enough to discourage me though.

Fast forward a few more months and my novel was on its fourth draft. I'd let a few people read parts of it and was starting to learn how to take criticism, but - more importantly - I felt it was time to give the idea of getting it published another shot. I found ten different agencies in Toronto and queried each one. By now it was almost the end of the year again, so the fact that I'd lost the competition had lost its sting and I was once again feeling hopeful.

But with the new year came rejection letter after rejection letter and my hopes sunk again.

For a while I chipped away at it, but it was drawing close to the two year anniversary of its beginnings and after two years - especially for a commitment-o-phobe like me - it was becoming more and more difficult to keep the passion alive. So I started working on something new, brushing my first novel off to the side.

Once in a while I'd come back to it and try to make a chapter more interesting or take out some needless adjectives, but as far as I was concerned, I had bigger and better things to worry about. It had served its purpose by sparking the realization that I was interested in writing, so if it did nothing else, that would be enough.

And then May 2011 hit.

I received an email from one of the agents I had queries months earlier saying that the synopsis sounded interesting, so they were requesting the first five chapters. Extactic, I looked at my first five chapters and realized they could be so much better - so I rewrote them and sent them off.

Of course, once I had rewritten the first five chapters, it only stood to reason that I rewrite the rest of them. And that's what I did.

Month after month passed and I hadn't heard anything from the agency who had requested my chapters, but I figured that was okay. I has now on the fifteenth draft of my novel and it was four hundred times better than the first few drafts had been, so even if the agency disappeared into thin air, I'd still be a happy camper.

Now let's jump to October 14th 2011.

I was sitting in my car, parked in the driveway having just come home from a long day at work when I decided to check my email on my (amazingly brilliant) iPhone. My inbox told me that I had an email from the agency I had thought must've just fallen into a black hole since I hadn't heard from them in so long.

I prepared myself for the worst. The, "thank you for sending us your chapters, but I'm afraid this book isn't for us" shpiel I'd gotten so used to reading.

Instead, I saw the most glorious sentence a writer could ever read: "I've read your first five chapters and I'd like to take a look at the rest of your manuscript."

I think I may have squealed. I'm not even joking.

Needless to say, the past few days have been spent making sure my manuscript is the best it could be, and as of last night, the manuscript has been sent off.

So it's back to the waiting game.

But it feels a lot more exciting this time. And a lot less hopeless.

Of course, getting an agent is basically still a part of the first step in the publishing process. If this agency decides to take me and my book on as a client, it still doesn't mean a publishing company will chose to pick it up - and then, of course, the book stores can chose not to put it on their shelves. So there's a long was still to go, but it's really cool that I've made it past rejection alley.

Anyway, I thought I'd mention all this in case anyone's interested in what the journey's like for a story to go from idea to book. If mine ever makes it as far as book, you can bet your bottom that the whole process will be recored on my blog. Beginning, obviously, with today. Though I have been taking you through a lot of the ups and downs in previous blog posts...

But I just realized how long this post is - and the fact that it's one in the morning and I have to work tomorrow - so I'm going to end it there.

Keep it real! :)