The Breach

A breach has appeared amid all the frustration . . . and my immersion in all things Stephanie Plum. I finally, after weeks of thinking, made the minor revisions necessary - thanks to MSFV, the Secret Agent and all the commenters that provided the necessary feedback for the minor revisions - to start re-querying my project. Who knew the first 250 words were so important. I understood about the first sentence, just not the first 250 (not that those words were horrible, they just needed a slight bit of polishing).

So, today, I finally did what I have been procrastinating about for weeks on end - fixed the minor things that needed fixing. Whew! I feel much better now.

In the end, it all boils down to perspective. Were my first 250 words horrendous? No, sorry, I just don't do horrendous. I've done crap a time or two (okay, maybe multiple times), but horrendous doesn't fit in there . . . that's my story, and I'm sticking to it, people!! The perspective gained from MSFV secret agent contest gave my novel the jolt it needed. Well, it gave me the jolt I needed. I leaped the hurdle today, dove through the slight breach in the wall of frustration that has surrounded me for weeks, and . . . voila!!!!

There's a definite sense of relief. I have no clue why I delayed so long. The fix wasn't that difficult. It was kind of like the time my mother butterflied the gaping wound in my head when I was little. I still have the scar, btw. I was prone to cracking my head open as a child. Well, the first two times were Mom's fault (not that she beat me or anything, we just didn't have car seats back then, and she had to swerve to miss the Fuller Brush Man, and my forehead hit the dash, it did the same thing one other time, and the third time I stumbled and hit the fireplace - ah, the joys of being a boy; girls just don't have those problems). So, I did the butterfly thing with my opening and I'm back on to the frustrating query process. Woo-hoo. Boy, Sister Cabernet is beckoning my name. Is it 5 yet?

S