Alison's Journal

So I'm doing this instead of the 80 other things I should be doing. OK, maybe not 80 but at least 5, including gathering a box of giveaway clothes for the TX Paralyzed Vets, who are coming by tomorrow, doing 2 Bible study lessons I need to have done by tomorrow morning, rummaging through paper piles to find some bills I need to pay, and gathering materials I need to do our taxes. I am so exhausted. It's been a hard day with the kids, it's rainy & cold (for Texas) outside, and I had a dental emergency this week & have to get a root canal on Friday. Whee. I don't think I'll be able to eat "real" food again (things I can really bite down on) for at least a month.... Not to mention I've been trying to write a novel! Actually I'm trying to write a snyopsis of it right now so I can apply for a small grant to finish it--the application is due by March 1. But since I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen at the end yet, it's pretty hard to write a synopsis! (I know basically what happens, but not when/where/how the big showdown will occur.) I've been pretty excited about this for most of the past week, since I actually got some writing done on the novel and came up with some ideas I was really happy with, but today I heard that some publishing houses sometimes hold things for 2 to 3 years before even rejecting them! So if one place held it that long and then rejected it, then another did the same, and then another finally accepted it but 2 or 3 years to get it into print, my contemporary novel could be historical fiction by the time it was actually published! I'm already pushing 35 here, I certainly don't want to be 50 by the time I could have a book in print! If I even live that long. So I'm not feeling so great today...but maybe things will turn around tomorrow. I also did submit a couple of other bits of writing to some publications (2 that don't pay...1 that would) last week, so I have at least a bit of hope for my writing at the moment.