Panic at the Laptop

Here's a new thing that is happening to me. I call it Panic Statue Syndrome. Actually, I just made that up, but from now on that's what I'll call it. As someone with a degree in Psychology, I have the authority to create disorders. It seems only fair to me.

Anyway, PSS is this: I research agents I want to send query letters to, or maybe I prepare a query letter, and suddenly my heart starts beating fast and I can't move. I'm staring at this suddenly terrible letter, probably rife with grammatical errors even though I've read it 100 times, and all I'm seeing is my future teeter tottering over the fiscal cliff (at least, my personal finances are at stake). I'm basically sending my heart out to COMPLETE STRANGERS who live in NY who are probably perfectly nice but maybe not and now they have the most important thing I have to offer and can stomp all over it. They may just glance over the letter, skim the sample pages they ask for and then that's it, dismissed. There's no way for me to properly convey how important this is to me, or how deeply I feel the need for this story to be out there.

And even if there were, thousands of other people no doubt feel just the same, want the same or similar things that I do. How can I expect a few random people to give us all the attention we so desperately want?

It's terrifying, really, thus the breathing issues that come about, and the minutes that pass with me sitting like a statue, swallowed up in fear that this publishing thing may never happen.

Luckily, I snap out of it, and I send the letter and mark it down and hope. Some people do this for years and years, the sending and waiting, and I've only been doing it for a month and a half. That's hardly anything, in the grand scheme of things. Basically any book you read on publishing will tell you that it's a slow, slow process. But I guess I'm just in a hurry to get to where I'm going. Or even to have a sign that I might be going somewhere.

It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Meanwhile, I'll just be sitting here with my brown paper bag, trying to overcome PSS as gallantly as one can. (There is currently no cure, please feel free to donate.)