"Well now our old fears and failures/ Baby, they do linger." - "All the Way Home" by Bruce Springsteen
After spending a few days thinking about how I wanted to improve chapter one of my first Willow Ryan book and taking the entire weekend to rewrite, I am really happy with the finished product. I used all of the advice I got from the agent who sponsored the pitch contest, and I have to say, it made a huge difference! I emailed him my query and the first three chapters this morning, so now I'm just waiting to hear back.
Now the reason for the title of this post. Schrodinger was a physicist who did an experiment where he locked a cat in a box with a vial of poison that would open at some time in the future. Since no one knew exactly when the cat would come into contact with the poison, the cat could be thought of as both dead and alive. Disturbing right? A classic paradox. That's how I feel about sending out this latest query. Since my revised work is now in the hands of an agent, I can look at it as the next rejection or the first step to publication. Since this agent gave me advice on how to fix the beginning of my novel, I feel like a lot more is riding on this query than any other one I sent out. Will he like the changes I made? Did I do too much telling instead of showing? Did I totally screw something up? Does the rest of the chapter match the quality of the first three lines which he actually described as skillfully written (so beyond exciting!)?
Like Schrodinger's Cat, I too am in a paradox, although it's not one that could kill me. It may drive me insane, but that's another story! I just hope that when I do hear back from this agent, it's good news and not another "Thanks for allowing me to read your pages, however..."
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