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2:59 p.m. - June 02, 2003 It's a sort of bizarre thing for me. I wrote something that I may want to publish. The reason I am so frightened is that I am ... well, I am not sure why. Perhaps it is because I finished it. Or perhaps it is because I really want to publish this after I have revised it about ten million times. It's a picture book. I had images of a story, of the pictures floating in my head. Then I decided to write the words. The words came out pretty easily. And it's done. I wrote it in one night, and I couldn't sleep that night because I kept thinking about what I'd written, and all the what ifs began to float in my head. What if I get it published? What if it becomes a best-seller? What if no one likes it? What if I publish it, but I am stuck with remaindered copies? What if? What if I make it big? What if I'm just humiliated? It's a very weird feeling. Because I want to do this. Maybe not the rejection letters, but I want to be a writer. A published children's author. I have no idea how I am going to do this. Then, of course, I started working on a chapter novel for children. Actually, I've had the first paragraph written down for at least three or four years, but I could never figure out what to do with it. Finally I decided to sit down at my laptop and just write. So my results from two nights (usually an hour in front of the laptop) has been one page: One chapter and the beginning of the second chapter. I have so much more to write. And as Anne Shirley has commented: the characters take a life of their own. I'm finding that they're doing things I wasn't planning for them to do, and that's just a surprise. I'm finding that I don't know what to expect from my own story. My story! Today, I'm leaving the house early to pick up some pictures from the store, and then drive to Borders to maybe look at some publishing books. I don't know what the heck I am doing at all. Funny how life turns out. I also want my friend to illustrate, but I am hearing from others that it's not a good idea to submit other people's renderings for your books; the editors will have someone in mind when they pick an illustrator/author. Aurgh. Self-publishing, of course, is always another avenue, but it would take a lot of investment, and you do everything. And I don't know enough about publishing to pursue that. I did, however, tell Sarah to make a dummy copy of the illustrations to send to different publishers. Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe we won't. Maybe she'll be an illustrator for someone else, and my story will be sitting in the reject pile. Who knows?
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