The Precipice

I can't take it anymore.  I'm on the ledge and I'm ready to jump.  I should have done it a long time ago.  But now, I'm acutely aware that I can't avoid it any longer.

Risk.

This ledge is much higher than it looks...
 and I have a fear of heights

It's not that I've circumvented it all these years.  In fact, I've often taken the hard treacherous route instead of the straight and narrow one.  But, I am by nature an extremely private person who shuns the limelight. And now I've written a memoir, it's edited and eventually, it will be published. Emphasis on will.  Which is both exciting as a writer and terrifying as the main character.  It's just that as usual, the path I thought I was on, which was the straight, narrow and flat one, for a change, got rocky.

When I sent off my manuscript to the editor, no one else had read it.  I was really unsure what she'd say.  I knew for sure, I have no idea how to write a book.  I've never had a creative writing class and I'm not a grammar nazi.  So, my expectations were low.  I sure didn't anticipate her urging me to get an agent to pursue a publisher because my book is what the market is looking for right now. Say what?  My plan all along was to self-publish.  And I still may.  

This was me researching agents at the orthodontist's office

I thought I was so close to being finished.  Not so.  Instead, the work has just begun. So,  I bought the latest edition of Writer's Market.  And now I'll be working my ass off sending a bizillion queries out to agents and publishers only to receive a bizillion rejection letters back.  Oh, who am I kidding?  They're not going to send me anything in return.

Unless one of them does.  But if I don't jump, I'll never know.