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Hello friends!

I’m back from a summer jam-packed with river trips to guide and mountains to climb.  But as the brisk Maine air turns our leaves every shade of autumn, I’m glad for the chance to spend a little more time around the house, working on my creative endeavors.

Here’s a brief update on the current status of my novel.

When I first received requests for my full manuscript from agents, back in April, I had certain presuppositions.  I thought that they might read it during their next free weekend (I mean, at least within a couple weeks, right?) and then get back to me.

Silly me!

All sorts of people are writing great works and submitting them to the same agents I’m submitting to, and their works deserve to be read too.  This doesn’t even take into account all of the authors that these agents already represent and all of the time and effort they have to put into each career – so of course I’m not high on anyone’s priority list.

It took a month and seventeen days to hear back from the first agent who requested my full.  I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was disappointed with the news – she was rejecting my book.  But it wasn’t a harsh or final rejection, she read the whole thing (!!) and mentioned any aspects of it that she liked.  She then gave me what she saw as the weak points of the book and encouraged me to revise and resubmit.

So I began editing, once again.  It was difficult to get much done over the summer, but this past month has been a bit of a revision intensive.  I’m no longer disappointed with that rejection – it was the best thing that could’ve happened to my novel.  I’m extremely excited for the future as I resubmit to her and send out my second wave of queries.  I’m also going to a conference in Boston over this weekend where I’ll have the opportunity to meet face-t-face with a few agents who are in the market for my book, which is extremely exciting.

What I’m learning so far, is that this isn’t a sprint.  It’s not even a 12k.  This is an all-out marathon, with all the sweat and tears that go along with it.  But you know what?  I’m up for it.

Danielle M Hines

Life is short, choose kindness.

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