Great Unexpectations

Last night, I was thinking of this whole querying process and trying to psyche myself for another round of queries to send out... and I realized that not even one small part of me thinks I'll get published. It's not that I don't think I'm a good writer. I do. There are lots of good writers out there, though. I'm not even depressed, because you have to have ambitions to be depressed. It's just a weird sense that this whole thing isn't my reality. My reality is that I'll be doing the same thing day after day... and there is some comfort in that.

Every query I send out... every contest I enter... it's like this big game with myself. It's pretending. Then, I'll wake up and write or revise just because I can't stop myself. Maybe it's because I have nightmares every night... or maybe it's the reality of coping with the kids. I don't have low expectations.... I have no expectations whatsoever.

Is that odd?

I mean, I have a full and now a partial out, but there isn't any expectation in my mind. I feel sad when I get a rejection, but part of that is just I put myself out there and exposed some part of me that I really care about. My characters are all so honest... even the evil ones that lie, because I know their souls and I write about that. It makes me wonder if I know their souls so well because they're each a part of me. So, that is what makes me sad about rejections.

As I was thinking on all this last night... I wondered if it was pessimism or pragmatism.

It's not like this will change the way I do things... because this is still fun. It's still fun to laugh with agents on Twitter. It's fun to enter contests. It's fun to pretend at this whole "writer" thing.

Okay, this was probably a really weird post. I didn't sleep more than four hours last night or the night before. So, if none of this makes any sense... it's not you... it's me. :)