SMILE! :)

It's important to think positively in any wake of life. As the following link explains, it's crucial in our relationships with people and in the way we affect the people around us.

http://michaelhyatt.com/becoming-a-happy-person.html

Negativity is like a contagious disease. It festers and spreads to those we contaminate. As a cynic who speaks fluent sarcasm, I'm one of the biggest offenders I know. I also have a bad temper problem, so it can be poisonous.

But honestly, it's important to talk with a smile and think with a smile too. It's especially important in writing, because this can be a discouraging field with little to no validation. We write because we love it, because we have a vision, because we can't stop...not necessarily to feel better in terms of feeling awesome. There are a lot of brick walls. There is a strength that exists within, and it comes from KNOWING that it's going to work out.

When your fingers fly over the keyboard, make sure you've got a smile on that dream of yours. Smiles toward success.

Query me softly.

When something feels right, it's right.

I've begun the serious query process. I started out by reading Miss Snarks' First Victim (excellent writing blog, by the way. Like seriously, if you haven't gone, go. But why you'd be reading mine and not hers...I'm not sure.), and found a list of agents that may just go for the Steampunky goodness I've put forth.

Thankfully, I have my writing mentor Bonnie Hearn Hill and my two fantastically talented relatives to help me out through this shenanigan. (Kara and Stacy Lucas.)

Rejection is only part of the phases, of course. I fully expect to be rejected into an oblivion. This isn't really being negative or pessimistic as much as it is being realistic and preparing oneself for the inevitable. When considering all of the THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of submissions

publishers and agents get A DAY... it's amazing we're not rejected more.

I know the authoress of THE HELP, Kathryn Stockett, was rejected so many times that she started lying about what she was doing. She'd go to hotel rooms to re-write and query because she got so embarrassed of her "unjustified" persistence with the whole process.

Unjustified indeed.

It is persistence that sets the successes from the failures. We have been over this time and time again.

As I embark on this potentially painful, but hopefully (and reasonably) brief process, I am prepared to take my wounds, display my scars and come out waving my flag around on the other end. Hell yeah. Let's DO THIS!