Elations

Let’s not bury the lead: I think I may be in the last few hours of one of the best days of my life.

So far, obviously. Someday when I’m riding a pterodactyl into a week-long game of naked laser tag (in space!), I’ll look back on this auspicious Wednesday and think: Was there really a time before I had a pterodactyl? What in the hell did I spend all of my time doing back then? Not riding pterodactyls, that’s what.

First off: I nailed a job interview. This is the least exciting of the three things that made my day, though noteworthy, certainly.

My agent also sent me a publishing contract, which is a sentence I’ve wanted to write my whole life. Eight months ago I didn’t have a contract, or an agent. Just two manuscripts (one particularly dusty, and liable to stay that way) sitting in my hard drive, playing harmonica and singing prison songs. But not like, “Jail House Rock” prison songs. The sad ones, about “nobody knowing” and the like.  A miserable state, happily ended.

The funny thing is, we haven’t decided if we’re taking the contract. Lots of questions still to be had, especially for a raw green publishing newbie like myself. Percentages, rights, maths – all of the stuff I spent most of my academic career trying to get the hell away from. My agent and I are talking about small presses and big presses and working out the details but here’s the best part:

None of that matters.

My worst case scenario at the moment is getting published.

The third thing that put a nice fucking cherry on top of all of this: today was the last day of NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. And I finished, at around nine o’clock. 50,000 words this month.

I’m feeling lucky. Tired. Filled with a voice telling me to enjoy the moment, which is so not a problem. I tried to watch TV, I tried to play some PS3, I tried to tell myself that now was the time to take a much needed break from writing.

So naturally I came here, to type it out.

Fuckin’ writers.