Let the Waiting Begin

Today I took off work to focus on writing a one-page synopsis of Glass Houses. Man. Boiling 378 pages of narrative down to one page is no easy feat.

My first attempt ended up being six pages long. I kept cutting and condensing until I got it down to a page and a quarter. Finally I played with the margins and fonts to get it all on one page. It doesn't look squeezed...honest.

With that mean task accomplished I focused on writing the one-pager for my e-mail query to the agent of my dreams. The opening is supposed to be a one-sentence synopsis of the book. Thanks to the comments and feedback I received from many of you, I ended up saying:

Glass Houses is a humorous coming of age tale narrated by an earnest but confused child of the sixties from a large dysfunctional southern family about his struggles to find himself, come to terms with his homosexuality and reconcile his new reality with the Catholic faith of his youth

With that done and a few suggestions from helpful websites to guide me, the rest of the query came together quickly. It's honest, straight-forward and hopefully interesting enough to get her to open one of the attachments.

The first attachment is the dreadfully dull one-page synopsis. The second attachment is the first fifty pages of the book, polished to a high shine. I feel great about those pages because earlier parts of the manuscript are much more polished than later parts.

I went back to the agent's website to make sure I was following directions. I composed a message to the correct e-mail address, used the requested subject line, directed the query to the attention of the agent of my dreams as requested, pasted my query into the body and attached the files with the synopsis and first fifty pages.

I reread both the attachments to make sure there were no typos or grammatical errors. Terri looked over the query and synopsis for me--it's always good to have a second set of eyes and none better than my mentor, cheerleader and biggest fan. I went over the first fifty pages again, tinkering with a word or two now and then but mostly just making sure everything was perfect.

For some reason, I couldn't hit send. When my partner got home I was rocking on the sofa in front of my laptop with my hands clenched to my sides. He understood immediately what was going on and after confirming I was ready, clicked send.

Glass Houses now sits in the in-box of the literary agent of my dreams. The way I keep tearing up and getting emotional about it, you'd think I'd just had a baby or something.

It's more like I just found out I'm pregnant. Now the waiting begins. Few would say patience comes easy for...

The Crotchety Old Man