Thank you for your submission, but…

I’m sitting here at “my” desk at Bright Sky, alone, just finishing putting together my first manuscript.  And as professional as that sounds, I took no part in writing, editing, or working on it.  All I did was print out each section and come up with some order I think it should be printed in.  That’s finished and I’m in the warehouse alone, cold, with almost frostbitten fingers (there is no heat in the building) and I figured I would update this blog that no one (just yet) is following, save for my mother and my fiance.

I feel all important, though, pretending that I am working hard, making pivotal movements in my career or really impacting the lives of others, especially as I am about to send out rejection letters.  And as childlike as it sounds, I am excited since I get to sign the letters, “Caitlin Deans, Editorial Department.”  It just sounds so official. And I was asked to attend the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston to sell books for Bright Sky.  

I can just imagine the day when I move to Boston–well, Walpole or Norwood to be more specific, although even that isn’t set in stone–and becoming this famous editor wearing editor heels or winter editor skirts strutting around downtown Boston with my briefcase-bag slung across my shoulder heavy with prospective manuscripts and soon-to-be-famous authors.  This is correct ladies and gentlemen, I am a simple dreamer.

In all this reading of manuscripts and submissions, I keep thinking of my own work in progress.  For my senior undergrad thesis I am doing a creative work, and of course I had to choose to write a book.  A short novella, is what my professor says I should aim for.  But I just don’t see how I am to get all my intersecting characters fully developed by page fifty.  I’m thinking it’s going to be closer to two hundred, although I’ll try not to digress too much.

And with any luck, I’ll be one of those soon-to-be-famous author’s un-published manuscript going for a ride in some famous editor’s briefcase-bag slung across her shoulder while she struts the streets of downtown Boston, or New York, or Denver, or maybe even Houston.  

We shall see.

But in the meantime, I’m going to work from the bottom up, sending out kind-hearted rejection letters, sitting in on publishing meetings, putting together manuscripts, replacing lightbulbs, and typing on this blog in the freezing warehouse.

Because everyone has to have a starting place.  
I might as well get a few good stories out of it.