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Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Never Too Late

 

It's IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of  Alex Cavanaugh. To find links to other IWSG contributors, click here. Thank you to the March co-hosts: Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen Jacqui Murray, Chemist Ken, Victoria Marie Lees, Natalie Aguirre, and JQ Rose

I have a quote typed on a piece of paper, which may be, but probably isn’t by George Eliot, sitting on my bureau where I see it every morning

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

I read it recently while pondering my changed status in life. Now that I’m not what I used to be, what is it I want to be? —other than what I used to be, but that’s a never-ending loop. That day, clear as crystal, the quote reminded me of one big want that hasn’t changed. I want to see my name on the spine of a book.

Those of you who visit here regularly will understand why sending out queries slowed to a dry-stream trickle these last long months. But the quote reminded me. There can still be forward progress in my life. To that end, I made a goal to get one or two query letters out every weekend for the foreseeable future. I want to think it’s a numbers game. If (note I underlined that word), my writing is good enough, eventually I’ll find the right agent for it. That won’t happen if I am not sending out queries.

The fact is, I have two completed books. One for which I’ve sent out something like seventy queries over the course of a few years (even stopping the querying and working with an editor to perform an  overhaul in the middle of it). I received requests for partial and full manuscripts, but sadly, nothing more happened and I let the querying drift away while working on another book.

Now that I am researching agents for the second book (while writing yet another), I seem to be finding more agents who would be interested in the first one, which I’m not ready to toss aside. So, last weekend, once I challenged myself to get back into full query mode, I sent out three for the first book, and two for the second. I don’t advise doing it like this. Anyone who has queried knows it’s not an easy task. My brain was churning. But still, on we go.

The quote, which George Eliot may or may not have authored, says so very much. Regardless of where we are in life, we can move forward. We can set goals and we can chase them. It’s never too late. All it takes is a willing heart— and in my case, a fair bit of brain-scramble.

What goals have you put on hold? What are your plans for re-energizing them?