My Head's On the Block - Now It's Time to Find Someone With a Hatchet

So I have a new "final" version of my query for Swords of Fire: Traitor. I guess I can begin looking in earnest for an agent to send it to. Good luck with that, right?

The level of stress in my writing environment has increased many fold since school has let out. Apart from the garage sale (which is now - thankfully - over) Son is now home all day, and that means demands upon my time. Spouse is home more often, too. More demands on my time. Then we have to find a new place to live. We have to pack to move. Got blasted doctor visits. There's always something which gets in the way of writing.

It's always been like that for me. I have to fight for my time to write. Even when I was in elementary, junior high, and high school, finding a quiet place to write was not easy. There was always some kind of activity - authorized and otherwise - competing with my attention to what I was writing. Perhaps that's why I eventually found I write best in the middle of the night. Normal people are asleep at that time.

I haven't been up so much in the wee hours the past couple of months. The garage sale took a lot of my time - and energy. I'm still recovering from two weeks of sales. We did well, but we still have hundreds of items which did not sell. It's amazing how much 'stuff' we have accumulated over the years.

Writing is such a personal thing. Sometimes Son will come and sit and watch. Then I just give up writing entirely and play a computer game. What's the point? I mean, until I release my writing I don't want it read by anyone but me. Ever. Sometimes after I release it I would dearly like to take it back, but it's too late.

Most of my stories are still in my head. Protected from comments and opinions I am not ready to listen to. Some are written down on paper, or in the computer. I'm not ready for comments on those either. A few I have sent out expressly to get comments.

Comments can hurt, but they are nearly always helpful, and I try to make it a rule to rewrite anything which receives negative comments - even if I don't take the exact advice given. My thinking is that something must be wrong, even if the suggestion s*cks. There have a been a few cases in which I have not done a rewrite. I did not rewrite Apprentice, for instance, after I got my final comments. Apart from the one reader, who didn't like the subject matter, they were mostly minor. I had already rewritten it based on fairyhedgehog's critique and it seems to be a finished piece.

So, back to my query. My intent is to pick an agent to submit to by the end of the week. Most have websites now, so checking out the kinds of works they represent should be okay - once I've found them. So begins the Gauntlet of Rejection. That's kind of why I quit going out in public. You know?