My Pledge to Y'all

I am making a pledge to you all, here and now.

I pledge to submit my novel to one publisher by the end of the month. If I don't, every one of you who reads this can come to SoCal and demand that I take you out for a beer. Every. Single. One of you.

It seems like a pretty empty consequence, because I don't believe my readership is that high, but I will pretend like the consequence is actually that I have to pay for thousands of beers. And while I would love to have a chat with most anyone over a beverage, I would not like to pay for it all. So, this is my pledge.

What's the impetus now? Well, I have been listening to "Big Magic" by the Eat, Pray, Love lady, Elizabeth Gilbert. Firstly, the books has me inspired again. Its message is part of why I'm back on my writing kick. But specifically, she calls out that finished is better than perfect. It's trite. It's obvious. We've all heard it before. But clearly that message hasn't really made a home for itself in my brain until now.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo. Then I did NOTHING with it. I tried to edit it to a "finished state" but never really got anywhere. All that writing, for naught. When I hemmed and hawed recently about it not being ready for print, that it needed editing, my person pointed out that that's what editors were for. Editing. It's in their job title. And honestly, why worry about it being perfect? It's probably not. And if it ever does get accepted, I'm sure the editor will have notes that will require some fixing anyway. Why not just wait for some notes to come, eventually?

Plus, if I do send it in, and it ever gets read, maybe I'll get some focused feedback, instead of just me trying to clean and tidy my novel in a vacuum.

Anyway, I found all these how-to-send-in-your-manuscript pages online. But I think I'm going to ignore them. I'm not going to go to so much effort to make it all perfect.. I mean, I don't do much in the way of spiffing up my resume when I job hunt. Why would this be any different for me? I hope that me, my work, the audacity of being a little-less-than-perfect, will speak for me and charm someone.

So. Anyway. I'm going to submit a manuscript to my publisher. To get me there by the end of the month, I'll list out my to-dos...

1. Combine all the chapter files into one master file of the story.
2. Spend 30 minutes looking into publishers and pick one
3. Fill out the nonsense and send it in.

Goal for Sunday: Step 1.