the (next) first step

So, yesterday marked the beginning of the next leg of this journey--I sent out my first query letter to an agent. Deciding on the right person took a while, but now my letter is waiting in his inbox. Or at least that's what I'm going to tell myself, because otherwise it means he read it already and decided he didn't want to read any more.

This may sound totally unreasonable, but writing that letter and choosing who to send it to has been so much harder than writing the story. Don't get me wrong; writing the story took me pretty darn close to six years, so it was by no means easy. However, that query letter was crazy hard! I never knew how difficult it would be to write a 200-word summary of the main theme of my 115,000-word story. Plus, you know how many reputable agents out there are interested in a new writer with no publications to her name and who decided to write a fantasy? Let's just say, not as many as I would like.

So, now my letter is out there. This is just the first agent I'm contacting. I'm being realistic and expecting to send this darn letter out to most likely a dozen more. My hope is that I'll catch the attention of that one person who is going to have faith in me, love my story, and be willing to take a chance on a physicist-writer.