Welcome to hell: the submission process. Part three, doing uncomfortable things

So the literary agent search continues and this week in particular has truly made me realise that I haven't got a bloody clue what I'm doing. It's like the road to getting published is this really high wall, and there is no way to climb up it and instead some people sitting at the top shouting down at me to not bother in the first place. I've definitely had blissful moments where I'll think about buying approximately one kilo of chocolate and just giving up on this crazy idea of trying to get a literary agent. I won't, but both parts of that fantasy seem appealing right now. I will at least be fulfilling part of it this morning by having the best thing to ever happen to me: Extra Chocolatey Hot Cross Buns from Marks & Spencer for breakfast (pictured). I genuinely have no words for how good they are.

I'll quickly do a little run down of everything I've done this week. First thing on Monday morning I started reading through/editing my short stories and finished them on Wednesday. At this point, all I'm really doing is faffing about with commas. I will be reading through them once more with Mum on the phone next week before banning myself from looking at them anymore. 

On Thursday, I continued my literary agent search. As a recap, last week, I whittled down potential agents to sixteen and now I have nine which I am definitely going to apply to. I have to say, I was pretty surprised that I took seven off my original list from last week as I seemed pretty set on all of them, but this time around, after further research, I knew some of them just weren't right. Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, it was a struggle to take them off the list because I have always found it hard to go against decisions I've previously made. It's like being stubborn with myself. But I am learning to be uncomfortable going against this resistant side of me and it feels good. 

Yesterday morning, I wrote a proper list of everything that needs to be done which has made me feel much calmer. Organising always has that effect on me and when I haven't written everything down, I feel completely lost at sea and drowning in all the work. Then, after I'd done the list, I start writing out the synopses for all the short stories as that is one of the things all the agents ask for. I'm keeping it as concise as possible because it would just be too big otherwise. 

This week, I've also been doing a lot of thinking about the whole submission process. I've realised that I will never really know if any of them are going to be right for me, and I could be making a massive mistake because no matter what, so much of it is a giant gamble. Even if an agent literally wrote that they are looking for a carbon copy of whatever I wanted to send them, I might be wrong for them, but I won't know that till it got to a point where they'd take me on and we worked together – lols, I make this sound so easy and one of them is going to take me on at the drop of a hat. I write short stories, I'm already in a bad enough position. It's like with dating or going on the apps, you can have a type in your head, but until you start interacting with them, you won't know if they will be right for you. It's very rare you actually end up with your type. It's sad, both with agents AND dating as I could have disregarded the most perfect agent for me because on paper they didn't fit exactly what I – or they – was looking for. 

Next week, I am going to be focussing on reading through the short stories for the last time, getting the synopses written, the cover letters for each agent finished, and potentially even emailing them. That might be a tad ambitious, but I'm just going to do what I can and see. 

Until next time

Cara x