Thoughts of Thanksgiving Dance In My Head....

Oh, I am so glad it's Friday today. It's been a long week and I'm not even sure why. It's one of those weeks in which not much has happened which is not a bad thing at all. Maybe it's because it's the week before Thanksgiving. Next week is the Official Start of the Holiday Season.

I'm very much looking forward to Thanksgiving. This is because I love turkey. I love my mother's turkey. Though we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving because we're British and all, we have enough American Interlopers in our family that we host the dinner. Which I suppose means we do celebrate the holiday really, doesn't it? I love that my mum makes it with all the British trimmings, roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, brussel sprouts, Bisto gravy and parsnips. I love the smell of the turkey, gently scenting the air with its meaty goodness.

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say I love having my family around on Thanksgiving day. The thing is, Thanksgiving Day is chaos. I think it's supposed to be, that it's a tradition to have a nutty family gathering or something. Our gathering is truly nuts. There are four children who are five and under. I love these children. They're my nephews and nieces. Singularly, they're sweet (most of the time), nice children who are fun to play with. Collectively, they're a hurricane of energy and noise that suddenly stops hearing and comprehending the word "No". The house is too small for this hurricane. Add five small dogs that get excited by excitement to the mix and you have all the elements to a backdrop of absolute havoc.

I like Thanksgiving night. I like that sudden quiet lull that falls over the house as soon as my oldest brother and his family leaves. Sometimes my oldest brother stays until almost midnight. I usually wait up. There's something about that inevitable lull that I need.

This is not to say I don't love my family because I do, very much. I love having them around. It's just something about Thanksgiving that is this huge crazy blur of activity in my mind. It gets in the way of the food.

But that's a week away. At the moment, the weekend lies ahead and I'm looking forward to that. I think it's mostly because of sleep. I like it when I can stay in bed and not have to get up for work. Then again, that's sort of a given for everyone, isn't it? The only thing better is when it's rainy because the beat of the raindrops on the windowpane and the howl of the wind is the best thing in the world to listen to when you're you're lying in bed and you don't have to get up.

I don't think it's supposed to rain this weekend. It was supposed to snow but the forecast has changed. Which is probably good for you because then I'd probably have to wax poetical about snow in at least one more blog.

My goal for the weekend is to email a query letter to at least 10-15 agents. Again. I'd love to say "This is it, this is the one!" but, frankly, I'm also rather jaded. I've done this before. Granted, it was with another book but I've still done it before. The nice thing about email submissions is there's no postage required and there's no delay in getting the letter to the reader. The bad news is that rejections also come more quickly. I've had rejections less than ten minutes after sending the email. I'm trying to thicken my skin, to not take rejection so personally but, well, frankly, that part is hard. When you put a little bit of your heart and soul into a book, it's really hard to condense it into the perfect query letter. It's also tough to read contradicting advice from agents: One says the query letter is everything, another says that he'd rather effort went into editing the novel rather than be spent on crafting a great letter. It's disheartening. What's even more disheartening is when the rejection letter has a spelling/typo in it. That's happened a couple of times, believe it or not. That does not make things easier.

However, I will try and continue to try though I sometimes hear a little voice telling me to give up. I can't listen to that voice, no matter how loud it gets because, at the end of the day, I love writing and that's ultimately why I do it. Sometimes it's hard to remember that but, fortunately, I've got good people around to remind me.

So, on this Friday morning, I shall look forward to the thought of sleeping late tomorrow, of the hope of snow and of the lazy, crazy day that will Thanksgiving next week. I shall put a little piece of my heart in that query letter and hope that it resonates for someone out there. And, if not, I will keep trying. Wish me luck.

Happy Friday.