Well, I did it. "What?" you ask. Allow me to elucidate. I...
- finished several passes that incorporated J.Z.'s high quality notes
- did a polish pass (where I still discovered scads of typos and formatting errors!)
- hunted down any editing debris (highlighted text, bits of cut text I didn't know if I wanted to get rid of yet)
- ran a spell check (hmm, you mean "smellingly" is not a real word?)
- wrote a query
- sent the query to Liz, my excellent picture book editor (yes, I'm extremely fortunate to have a leg up on the slush pile)
- was greatly relieved when she quickly responded that she'd love to read the manuscript
- sent off the manuscript
What a terrifyingly exciting moment it was to press that send button.
My goal from the beginning has been to write something I was proud of -- which for me meant a manuscript that was a fun read and was good enough to send to a publisher. I feel I've achieved that goal. What's next? I'll continue to post here on any relevant news but I won't be sitting on my hands, waiting. I plan on taking a week or so off to clear my head. Then I'm going to start work on a screenplay (animated). That should take about a month and then I'm jumping right back into the novel game -- outlining one of the many "middle grade" ideas I have with the idea of completing another novel by the end of the year.
Word count a/o today's submission: 76696