Thursday, May 20, 2010

Submissions

People have asked if we're "announcing" our pregnancy. Obviously, it's appeared here in my blog and our friends know, but the reason it hasn't appeared in the subject line of the blog or anything like that is because we're still waiting for the 12 week milestone before we really get our hopes up. I've watched a couple of friends have to go and un-announce their pregnancies, so I just won't feel secure until the end of the first trimester. My reason for saying anything was to explain why I'm off my sleep meds and will be off them long term. As much as I fight it, not sleeping regularly makes me depressed and bitter and I know it shows in my blogging. Best to disclose what's going on than to have people think I've just turned mean :-).

This time around it's been especially hard, because it's yet another time I have to take a break from treatment. We've known I've got some kind of condition for about five years, but in that time I've only been treated about half the time. I've gone off medication for pregnancies and while trying to get pregnant, and I delayed treatment until I could help my husband with some health concerns. I try to focus on the positive, how I want children and this is my choice, but late at night when there's no prospect of sleep, or in the middle of the day when I'm too tired to see straight and yet all I can do is maybe doze, or on the days when I can't stop sleeping, even though it isn't restful, perspective is hard and I just go crazy over how much of my life has been eaten up by this condition. And please, while I'm in the midst of dealing with this, don't try to console me by saying you know how it goes. Read back on some of my old posts on my condition before you even consider it, please. I'll bet you almost anything, you've got no clue how it feels - no offense. I missed church on Sunday because I was home crying my eyes out for absolutely no reason. I've never met anyone else who does that.

Submissions are not the best activity when you're in a low mood, but they're a part of the business. I initially posted the types of responses I was getting in my agent search for my novel, but I'm purposely not continuing with that. The reason for that is because you don't want to leave a public record if you have a long, difficult submissions process. It's an advertisement that lots and lots of people didn't think your book was worth investing in. The thing is, I know a few people who've had brutal agent searches who ended up landing a good book deal, so it benefits no one to broadcast every failure along the way. Having said that, it's still very early days in my book submission process and the response has been quite positive, so so far, so good!

Still no word back from that book publisher on my LDS novel, but also how it goes. Now, I'm posting all these rambles about how the business works as information, not as complaints - just so we're clear. Submitting work directly to publishers can be a loooong process. In the LDS market, it'll often be many months. In the national market, it can be one to two years, and those time frames are per publisher. I thank everyone who continues to ask about whether that book's coming out. It will still be quite a while before I can answer that, and I will announce it once I know.

2 comments:

  1. Crying eyes out for no reason? *slowly raises hand*
    I'm ridiculously evil while pregnant. Sorry about the lack of sleep. I think I'm depressed for the majority of my pregnancies...then there's the PPD. Joy. Can't completely empathize, but I can completely sympathize. It wasn't till my 4th pregnancy that I finally felt entitled to hate it.

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  2. Hi Abbie! Yeah, the out of control emotions are an insomniac thing in my case, not a pregnancy thing. Not to the point of hating pregnancy yet, but I can see how people get there. :-)

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