Last week I said good-bye to my agent. I signed with her in spring 2022. It was such a thrill. My first agent!

One of my reasons for persevering in this difficult business is that I want to give kid readers a wonderful reading experience. It’s a way of paying it forward.

In April 2022 I signed a contract with a literary agent. It was thrilling!
Since her offer of representation happened quickly, I expected other things to happen quickly too. In particular, I expected to get some notes from her on the manuscript so I could revise and then we could go out on submission.
But that didn’t happen.

I used to be a “pantser.” I liked discovering my story as I wrote it. It felt free and creative that way. At the same time, I was leery of the plotting/outlining approach. I thought if I planned my story in advance, I’d snuff out the creative spark.

You’re writing along, making excellent progress on your draft or your revision, and then wham!

You get the most stunning idea for a novel! It demands your attention. It keeps you from falling asleep at night. It dances around in front of you when you’re trying to work on your current work-in-progress.

This is shiny object syndrome.

Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard the phrase “compare and despair.” But I’ve certainly done my share of comparing myself to others and then despairing about how little I’ve accomplished. What an awful trap to fall into. It can be hard to pull ourselves out of it. I try to remind myself that life isn’t a competition. Neither is writing.

Whether you’re in the middle of writing your first draft or revising your seventh, remembering what you were thinking the last time you worked on your MG or YA novel can be challenging.

As writers, we produce a lot of words and a lot of computer files. It’s easy to get buried by both. So I have a few tips.

Writing a novel is also full of obstacles and challenges. It is work. Just like recovering my athletic ability is work. We don’t need inspiration to get our work done. We just need to show up.