I supposed it's a bit overstated. But, today, I started to look for agencies and agents to submit a query to. It occurred to me that unlike developing an idea, writing the story, revising the story, this is something done alone. Writing the query? You can get feedback from other writers. Same thing for the synopsis. After all that, it's just me that has to click the send button. Alone in the room, a dog barking in the distance, clicking sending.
There are people who give themselves goals. "I will submit to two agents a day." Or, "I will send out three stories a week." And yet, when it comes down to that moment, it's just them, at a computer, clicking send/submit. All alone.
Even if I or they went out to a coffee shop, crowded with pour-over hipsters, all that cheeriness has nothing to do with my mission, any author's mission. Click the send button. And I'm really the only one that knows that I did it.
Maybe we need an "I submitted a query" sticker. Kind of like the "I voted" sticker. But who'd give it to me? The agent/editor? Be serious.
Oh, what if I threw a submission party. Not to celebrate my submitting something. Rather, a bunch of writers sitting around, chatting together, drinking something mind numbing, and cheering every time one of us click the send button. Would that be encouraging? Would it really be a group thing? Or is the act of clicking send on a query/submission always an isolated action?
Click. Send. Click. Send.
