A Story of Coughs (wha...?)

i'm done. the excitement of the thought races through me. i glance down at my pages [cough cough computer screen cough cough] and can't believe that it's finally finished. i turn to the front page [cough cough scroll up to the top of the word doc cough cough] and think to myself, "it's ready." and it is. and it's perfect. all that i could've ever hoped for.

It's fun finishing books, isn't it? :) It's got it's own special kind of charm. ;) But there's something that every young author dreams about--not only finishing their novel, having it done, feeling that satisfaction, but sharing it with others. It's fun to share stories with you guys. You always seem to excited. It makes me excited, makes me smile. But what if you want to reach more people?

Well then you just should... ;)

(cough cough publish your book cough cough)

Yeah, yeah, everybody says it, everybody stalls, everybody's scared of sending their story in and getting it rejected. (cough cough me included cough cough) But I've finally taken a big step forward. A.k.a. people, I have started my first query letter.

Whoa, pause.

What on earth's a query letter?!

(don't worry,  I didn't know what one was until a few weeks ago =P)

OK, I'll be simple--it's that letter that you send to the publisher saying "I'm so and so and you should publish this book because it's amazing". Pretty much. ;) There's lots of ways to write a query letter (like everybody and their brother has a different way), but the way I'm doing it is the way that the publishers that I picked out told me to do. It's kind of confusing, and needs lots of polishing. (no joke...)

And what's this story?

Um... cough cough...

Well, you know how I said I was getting Rubberboot Girl published in that magazine? Well, it hasn't come out yet, so I was like, "Whatev! I'm going to get it published!" So hopefully Rubberboot Girl will be here. In front of me. In book form. In... um... how long does it take to get a book published? (or accepted, for that matter...?) Just to say, I haven't sent in my query letter yet (*polishing*^), but I'm hoping that somewhere, somehow, for God's glory, I'll get it published.

(by the way... I'm sending it into a Christian publisher's, so... yeah... hopefully they like it. :))

I'm just going to say, I think the hardest part of the query letter was coming up with the synopsis.

Take that back. The table of contents was the hardest.

Mostly because I hadn't made one yet, so I had to go back through the whole thing, name all of the chapters (starting to feel bad for me yet? lol), and write them down. PHEW! It took forever. But it was worth it to see a table of contents of Rubberboot Girl staring back at me. :)

What steps have you taken towards writing a book of yours? Have you? What kind of books do you like reading? And (nervous cough cough...) do you think it will get published?

The Storyteller of Weston County, signing off...