Out of My Hands

One of my goals for this year is to write a book. Pretty ambitious, eh? Yeah...I know. The book idea that I had been playing around with and trying to write was put on hold when another idea struck me. Tim and I were out on a date last Saturday night while visiting my parents (free babysitting, in other words.) We were eating dinner and I felt like in my mind this little car swerved around a corner and slammed into my brain. The car was representative of a new idea and I tried as hard as possible to listen to Tim afterwards. All I could think about was this story that was forming in my head! After dinner (which was at a restaurant called Cancun. It's in Okemos and if you're ever in that area you really should eat there. It's one of those hidden hole in the wall places that is DELICIOUS!) Anyways, after dinner we went to Schuler's and for a few minutes I hunkered myself down in front of the writing section and skimmed through books. The story kept forming and shaping itself in my head and I kept repeating certain sentences and phrases to myself to keep from forgetting them.
This past week I sat down and wrote out a quick outline. The challenge is going to be tearing myself away from the books I want to read in order to write it. I think I'm going to have to set up some type of schedule for myself. For example: naptime - read a book, after bed - write. Hmmm, where does Tim fit in then? Maybe I will write on Tuesdays and Thursdays during preschool time since Ellie naps at the same time. I can use weekends while Tim is home to steal away for a bit, too.
Anyways, like you care. So, in working toward this goal, Tim and I also thought I should have little goals along the way to help. While I paused and hesitated and tried to avoid the subject, Tim said, "By the end of the week you need to turn in an article to be published." I about choked but accepted his challenge.
Today I researched a magazine to find out how to go about the process. It turns out you have to write a query letter describing your idea, what its purpose is and what value it has to the reader, what qualifications you have to write about it, and some other little infomation. Then in about 8 weeks (8 weeks!!) they contact you to tell you whether they accept your query or not. Then you go about submitting your article and then they reject or accept it.
It sounds much harder than I pictured in my head for a magazine article but I accepted their challenge.
In a business envelope today I mailed away my first query letter. I shed a lot of nervous tears while praying over it. You would have thought it was a sick patient the way I was laying hands on it and then grasping it to my heart after printing it out. I realized while pressing the "print" button that we are almost out of ink and everything has been printing off all faded and weird lately. I took the letter out of my hands and it had printed perfectly. It was like one of those moments where the clouds break and the sun shines, but instead it was printer ink. Maybe it's a sign.
So pray for me. Each time I think about it, my stomach gets all knotted and I want to throw up. It's out of my hands both literally and figuratively.