The three finalists in the ABNA contest were supposed to be notified yesterday. My phone didn't ring with any mysterious area codes. Neither did I get any email from Amazon. So it's not me.
Depression set in quickly. It's difficult not to be hopeful and enthusiastic. I made it to the final 100 entries out of 10,000. I had an all-positive Publishers Weekly review - it was effusive in its praise with nothing negative to say. So I got my hopes up. I had a better chance of geting into the top three of ABNA than of winning the lottery.
But it's not to be. Now what? Time to regroup - yet again. I have regrouped so many times after disappointments that I feel like a veteran of strange and foreign wars. Typically the depression doesn't last that long, though. If I were really depressed I wouldn't be writing this - and the act of typing out my thoughts does help. It's not like I base my whole existence on whether I can get published or not. My value as a human being is not determined by whether you can buy my novel in a bookstore.
I will rework my query letter, including the news about ABNA and my PW review. I'll search out more agents to send it to. I'll look through the short stories again and send some more of them out to literary journals. And I'll continue to work on the next novel. Of course, I have another couple of novels that are in the drawer, so to speak, and that is probably where they will remain for the time being.
Always at the back of my mind lurks the fear that I may never get published. I may never attract the attention of an agent or an editor or a publisher. So be it, but it won't be because I didn't try.
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