Focus

I’ve been feeling a lot of personal pressure to get my manuscript published.  And I think this is because both at FP-NC and HC so many of the authors I (or the agents or editors) work with are so young.  There’s Kody Keplinger (The DUFF and upcoming Luststruck), Veronica Roth (the upcoming and going-to-be-huge Divergent), Hannah Moskowizt (Break, the upcoming Invincible Summer and several others) and Courtney Allison Moulton (Angelfire).  They’re under the age of 25 and have wonderfully successful books under their belt.  I obviously still haven’t entirely grown out of selfish-teenager-mode because I. Want. That. Too.  NOW.

I have to stand back and remind myself that that isn’t right for me.  I just started my fantastic dream job.  I love it, but it’s new and I’m still learning the ropes.  As I mentioned last week, it’s beginning to take up even more of my time.  Add that on top of finding and settling into my new apartment, I’ve been busy, and my focus needs to be on that fantastic job and becoming the best editorial assistant I can be.

Querying is also a full time job.  While I have an advantage of knowing the industry, it’s very fledgling knowledge, and like all (good) writers, I need to research which agents would be a best fit for my manuscript.  Just like my 9-to-5 job I want to be able to put in 100% when querying.  This means I have come to the decision to wait on querying my manuscript.  My original goal had been to start the first of this year, but I haven’t yet received all the feedback I was waiting on, so I pushed that goal back.  Now, with some more revision under my belt, I’ve still decided it’s still better to wait until the time is right for me, not anyone else.

This isn’t to say I won’t be writing- this weekend I finally got the chance to start working on my New Years Resolution (yes, I am aware that it is the beginning of February and not January, but I knew that going into the New Year my resolution would start a month late).  It felt so good to write!  And I will continue with that good writing feeling until I am more settled in my job and have found a way to balance full time job and writing career. 

Any advice on how to do so?