The agent for one of my favorite authors recently announced that he was taking queries. My brother alerted me to this development, which I was glad for because I haven’t really been in book mode for months. I panicked a while ago because I thought I lost all my drafts for my current novel before I remembered that I had made a different folder for it on my desktop. That’s how much I’ve been writing fiction lately.

It’s hard to think about writing for myself when I write for my job every day. And once I’m out of a story, it’s hard to jump back in. On my old blog, I have several posts where I said that it’s time to commit, it’s time to write every day. Marriage, graduation, work, and my stupidly procrastinating self have screwed that up for me. Honestly, I’m scared to write that again and then fail to do it. I put “writing” in the description of this blog, but I’ve only tagged one post with it, and that was pretty tangential. But I still hold on to writing as one of the most important things in my life.

About a year ago, I started reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott for a class. I love it because she sounds like a person who struggles with the writing, but finds beauty in the story and in writing itself. It makes me feel like I’m not the only one struggling.

I wrote a query letter today. I emailed it to an agent. I told someone else about my science fiction, re-written fairy tale. That small step brought me back into my story.

And no matter the answer, that makes the letter worth it.