Things happen when you least expect it....

They really, really do.

In the second half of 2005 and the first half of 2006 writing productivity came in fits and starts. I had lots of boosts - a great read from the Romantic Novelists'Association's New Writers Scheme for the follow-up to McWife; sponsorship to attend the RNA Conference and to rejoin the organisation; support and encouragement from friends - but I was still somehow in a bit of a meh rut.

I was working on revising the McWife follow up, and on writing a fourth MS. I did hit good patches and liked what I was doing, but there seemed to be a great many other preoccupations leaching the creativity out of me. One was starting a Masters in Community Studies at Durham University (incidentally where I'm writing this - and it's lovely to be back here) on top of my full-time job, and the other was the pursuit of pregnancy.

I kept writing. Just.

And I pretty much forgot about those two submissions.

Then I received an offer in July 2006 from the e-publisher that had requested the MS from the Romance Junkies competition. It was a well-established e-pub, and a respected one, butI decided I didn't want to go that route with that book at that time, so I turned it down.

That felt very, very strange.

I shook my head over it, looked back over the history of that MS and pursed my lips and the missed opportunities and nearly-but-not-quites. I prepared to mentally put the MS under the bed, and that made me sadder than it should have done.

Then the unexpected, the unimaginable, the unbelievable happened. I got The Call.

Sitting down afterward to write a timeline of that MS for a writing e-group I belong to, I found that suddenly I was seeing things a whole lot differently. Those missed opportunities began to look like pitfalls avoided. The nearly-but-not-quites became not-now-but-soons.

So please, please remember, however bad it looks, sometimes things can turn right around. And what looked like a series of failures and flops can suddenly seem like an adventurous journey.

One that's only just beginning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Timeline of an MS

Summer 2001 - I started writing a book I never thought I'd finish, called McAllister's Wife
Dec 2001 - I realised I actually WAS going to finish my first ever MS, and queried Silhouette with it
Jan 2002 - I had a request for a full
Jan 2002 - Submitted the full. And waited. And waited.
March 2003 - Got a phone call requesting revisions. Completed the revisions, sent them off.
May 2003 - Heard that the MS had been passed up
May 2003 - Received a rejection by letter (ouch)
April 2004 - Submitted the first chapter to the Romance Junkies contest
Sometime after - It scored well in the RJ contest, and got a requets from two publishers. Started revising madly!
Nov 2004 - Submitted to the GH (good scores, but didn't final.)
April 2005 - Submitted revised MS to two publishers.
Sept 2005 - Submitted partials to ten other pubs, US and UK. Got some
rejections, some never heard from.
June 2006 - Received an offer from e-publisher. Turned it down.
Sept 2006 - Received an offer from second publisher. Plan to accept it.