Wednesday's Word: Calm (and Covenant Communications)

For years I have been envisioning how it would happen, and how I would feel when I finally got my first non-rejection letter from a publisher. Like you can imagine, words like excited, elated, thrilled, dancing on the ceiling, etc., were part of that vision.


Well, it finally happened to me the other day, not the dancing on the ceiling, but a non-rejection letter. I received an e-mail from Covenant Communications that they really liked my novel and they wanted to consider it further, (here’s where the dancing on the ceiling should have come in), but they would like me to consider changing the voice from YA to Adult for marketing purposes.

I can really see their point, and so I’m more than willing to attempt the rewrite.

Then why am I so unmoved by this milestone in my writing career? I feel like a mountain lake on a lazy summer day: calm.

Am I subconsciously shielding myself from possibility they will reject my rewrite? Have I become so conditioned to rejections that I fail to believe their e-mail was real? Or has the magnitude of that notification  just not sunk in yet? In any case, I am quite baffled at my emotions.

Then again I get to thinking. The times when I have felt calm about something has usually been when the matter at hand ends up being a good thing. Like my husband. Before I met him, it seemed I got twitter pated by every guy that I dated. But when I met him there was none of those butterfly-like feelings flittering around inside me. Instead a calm feeling permeated my emotions and everything about him just seemed to fit.

Calm is a good feeling. I’ll take it as a good sign.

Now, I’ve got to get to work.