This post is for my fellow writers/authors/fulltimeemployeeswhohavebiggerdreams...ers.

My 10 Steps of Writing a Book**
Step 1: get idea.
Step 2: write book.
Steps 3, 4, 5, and 6: edit book.
Step 7: discover the genre of written/edited book.
Step 8: find agent in newly discovered genre for book.
Step 9: pull hair out researching how to write the perfect query.
Step 10: have heart attack as the email is sent into the ether.

I am at Step 4... possibly Step 5.

I'm enjoying the editing part so far (I get to think of things to do to characters, and that, my friend, is power. Albeit power over fictional people, but still.). But at this point, I'm getting wires crossed and am trying to force Step 8 into the middle of Steps 3-6. While I'm definitely not ready to send out any queries, I have compiled my list of dream agents. And let me tell ya, it's a good list.

My struggle right now is not getting lost in the endlessness of #tenqueries and #askagent and #querytip and any of Chuck Sambuchino's blogs (like Successful Queries or Guide to Literary Agents). This can be likened to going to IMDb to see who played the Seer in season two of Once Upon a Time and getting to Shia LeBeouf's bio page (btw, this is the path: OUAT S2E14 - Shannon Lucio - Criminal Minds S4E19 - Michael Rooker - The Walking Dead S3E14 - Jose Pablo Cantillo - Disturbia - Shia LeBeouf.)

See what I mean? Endlessness. Lost.

Here is my advice to myself and to everyone else in the same position: know your goal, know how to get there, and know where you are on that journey and stop trying to live 4 months from now.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't be keeping an eye out for new agents or dreaming, after all, that's what our job is, to dream. What I'm saying is that it's easy to get sucked into the querying world, but try to resist doing it before you're ready.

I read #tenqueries periodically on Twitter, and I'm always shocked to see an agent pass on a submission because they don't represent that genre or the writing needs work (not that they pass, but because the author didn't do their research on the agent or haven't done the work to get the MS to as close as perfect as possible).

I've been so tempted to go ahead and submit something now because I know that it'll take weeks for the agent to get to my email. I think to myself, "I could totally be done with editing in 6 weeks. That's what they said their average response time is, and if I send the first 5 pages now, I'll be 6 weeks earlier on getting that request for a full MS."

Why? 1) in fiction, we're told to never query before it's complete and polished. 2) knowing me, I'll write something incredible that would be the greatest opening line ever, but my dream agent will already have my first few pages.

So I'm not going to fool myself by swearing off dreaming or looking up agents until I'm through Steps 6 and 7. But I am going to work to aim my excitement and energy into finishing as many rounds of edits/rewrites that my book needs before sending it out.

This way, whenever I get to that step, I'll be prepared, have a draft of my query letter, and have a solid starting point on what agents I'll send it to. I just won't get ahead of myself like I have been over the past few weeks.


**as of now, I am not published or represented, so please don't read this as a promise of "how to get published" if this is your goal.