The good news is, my agent likes the rewrite. He gave me that manna to us struggling, invisible writers: validating feedback, praise. He has high hopes about this book and wants to be strategic in his submission process as opposed to novel #1 in which he simply sent it out to a bunch at once and collected the rejections (albeit, there were some nice rejections, even a near-acceptance, but four publishers remained on the fence and never responded). I have good feelings (refer to the donut book story in my last post if you want to be reminded of my wacky belief system), different good feelings. The first good feelings last March were simply a sort of awe mingled with disbelief mingled with exhilaration that I had managed to score an agent. It was at that point I realized that I had been going about the process entirely wrong, believing that failure was the only possibility. I applied to graduate writing programs with the attitude that I would get an agent, but the agent came before school, throwing me for a loop. Still, it's been a tough year.

He gave me the mandate (okay, it was more like a gentle request) to rewrite novel #2 (Shaky Grounds is its title) and it took me nearly six months to even begin the rewrite and another four and a half to complete it. That may not sound like a lot of time, but when you're tackling a writing task, concerted effort every morning is the only way to go about it.

At any rate. First hurdle has been leapt. Leaped?

J