Not a Bad Monday

Life gets overwhelming and the days all blur together sometimes. Lately, I wake up on a Monday and it might as well be next Sunday; that's how jam packed my days are.

In a nutshell: I have 3 days a week where I drive 80 miles in a day back and forth to my youngest son's preschool. There is 1 day of volunteering in the kindergarten for my middle child, 1 day of piano lessons 25 miles away for the oldest child, 2 days a week of karate for both of the boys, 1 minimum school day every week, 2 days where my youngest is home all day with me and sad because his brother is in kindergarten and he isn't, and with half-day kindergarten I have 3 days a week of 2 drop offs and 3 pick ups.

Time flies.

So, when this Monday rolled around and I opened my email and saw that I won the Polka-Dot jersey for Heather's Edited to Within an Inch of My LIfe, Tour de Writing contest, I was ecstatic!  That means soon I will be the proud owner of a designer Mad Bag.  Thank you Heather!

Then I got onto my blogger dashboard and saw that Ronni over at Fiction Groupie just signed with an agent!  And Donna Hole just got a story accepted for publication. Yay!  Congratulations!  I love to see other writers getting agents and publishing stories; it's proof that there is hope for all of us.

That makes me feel like giving an update on my progess thus far.  I actually haven't been on my journey for very long so I still feel fresh with hope and ambition. 

Before I found the Query Shark I submitted 6 queries, all of which were rejected.  After Query Shark I sent another 6 queries of which I've been asked for my partial twice, one of which has been rejected.  The other partial manuscript is still out to an agent. 

I stopped querying because the agent that has my manuscript gave me feedback that prompted a complete revision of my story.  At the time of request, I only had time to revise the requested amount of manuscript to send it in quickly.  When I hadn't heard back from this agent in 6 weeks, I emailed her to check the status of my partial and to ask if I could resubmit the partial with a new synopsis because the changes affected the ending.  Resubmitting was not a problem for this agent, so off it went for the second time.  This partial might be out for awhile.  But, thanks to this agent (regardless if she rejects me), I've been able to revise my whole story and make it better.  For that, waiting has been worth it.  But now, the goal is to get back to querying.

In the meantime, I found myself a writing group that I'm very excited about.  We lovingly refer to it as Write-A-Tat-Tat.  I happen to be friends and neighbors with each of these ladies and we all came together for one goal, to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.  Four of the five of us have never written a novel before so I'm really excited to be working with them and them with me.

Despite my chaotic schedule, I still manage to fit in my writing (if I didn't, I would feel lost and afraid).  I might be down to only one day a week of blogging right now, but I take moments for writing everywhere, i.e. in the car waiting for my daughter after school, at night while husband bathes the kids, after everyone is asleep, one or two hours while all kids are in school and here and there on the weekends.  Do you find yourself having to cram writing into your schedule?