The art of procrastination

I've been telling myself (and others) for months that I'm going to send out queries for Distance and Time.

But there's this little thing called "fear of rejection" that sits behind me juuuuust to the right a little and mocks me. Usually, I'm a tough bitch. I confront things head-on with the balls of a Brahma bull. (Sidenote: In Googling "Brahma bull" to make sure I spelled it correctly, I learned that Brahma bull is often used to describe a man with a large penis. Huh.)

Where was I?

Oh yes - confrontation. Anyone who knows me knows that while I may not particularly like confrontation, I never back down from it. I grab it by the horns (still thinking about that Brahma bull thing. Sorry. I'll stop giggling in a minute.) and tackle it head-on. (still giggling.)

Rejection however, is a beast all its own. I can handle confrontation involving name-calling, discrimination, injustice, rude behavior, bad fashion choices and any series of other things. Rejection is not one of those. Rejection leaves me feeling helpless and insecure. I ultimately want to crawl into bed and hide from rejection.

As I began learning more about having my writing published and realized that rejection is a huge part of success (odd, huh?) I got cold feet, tight muscles in my neck and a knot in my gut. It's one thing to write for someone close to me about subjects we agree on. But my story wasn't necessarily in that category - especially where potential agents are concerned. They see housewife-turned-author probably a hundred times a day or more.

So here I sit.

Avoiding.

Delaying.

Inventing chore after imaginary chore that I simply MUST do before sending those queries.

Yesterday I Tweeted all day. The day before that, I caught up on my 30-day song challenge blog. The weekend, I spent at my in-laws. Last week I cleaned the entire house, decluttered closets, bagged up clothes for Goodwill, rearranged my office, set up playlists to play while I'm writing.

HELLO?! Writing what? More shit that'll never get published because I'm too chickenshit to send a simple letter where someone may or may not say "You've got great potential. Let's talk?"

Today, the procrastinating is done. I sent off my first six queries. And they may send me a letter that says "You've got great potential" or they may say "Your stuff sucks. Take a class and learn the difference between lay/lain/laid, will you?"

Either way. Rejection? Stick that in your juice box and suck it!