Partial

Now that I have gotten another request for a partial, I can acknowledge how very much I really have missed requests for partials lately. It's all very well to be able to take rejection - but I am a damned good writer, and I don't do this querying dance just to be all by myself with my damned good stories.

I have enough life set out before me to handle by myself. It's time my writing got a whole lot less solitary. I can NOT be the only person getting gratification out of my work. Because if I am, it really is only work.

If I'm not, it gets to be entertainment. And the idea of entertaining people genuinely tickles me. This story is so GOOD. It's exciting and interesting, and all but untold in American publishing. And the next one - more of the same, in the marketing sense, but so much new too, in the characters, setting, and span of generations. And the third ... I think might even almost be romantic, and funny; and it is so personal for me. All of them are.


***


It's hard for me to acknowledge how harrowing writing can be. But I know myself. I know my ability to endure massive quantities of stress, and pretend I don't know it is there, because to complain about it only dares things to get *really* bad. I know my tendency to acclimate to a state of things which isn't optimal. I did it at my last job, for two years. I can't deny a certain kind of denial - even if I think it is the right tool for me, to cope and to bouy above outrage, or depression, or my simple, fundamental laziness.

And querying can try your soul. At the back of my throat, the tiniest twinge of a desire to just let go and sob is teasing me. I finally got another request for a partial.

I needed that.

I need a whole lot more than I like to admit.