Doong Sa... Do Not Be Afraid

If you're a John Irving fan, you may recognize that "Doong Sa" is Vietnamese for the second half of this post-title: "Do not be afraid". I assume John got it right; I never checked beause he used the phrase so effectively in A Prayer for Owen Meany that if he did get it wrong, I don't want to know.

Fear is a subject with which I'm intimately acquainted. Blame it on parents with overactive imaginations, or blame it on my own. Chalk it up to pride, of which I have a wide streak. Attribute it to the chaotic world in which we live, where fear is sometimes considered a gift.

The fears I wrestle with most these days have to do with failure. It's the what ifs -- you know them -- what if it's not good enough? What if we never get it sold? What if I'm just a two-bit hack who doesn't write as well as that [insert derogatory comment & expletive here] Diablo Cody? (I hated Juno. Hated it. On multiple levels. And that was before I knew that woman got her start writing a raunchy blog. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I guess, but writers don't get taken seriously as it is. She's not helping.)

But I started this blog to hold myself accountable, so it's time to face my fears. We sent out our first query letter in three years on Wednesday, January 21, 2009. I wasn't going to say anything here, because almost all query letters end in rejection and getting rejected publicly is supposed to be humiliating, right?

Forget that. Instead, I'm going to take advice from -- of all people -- Bob Dylan, who said: "...Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most."

So... no more silence. I'll post about the silence of the agents we contact, if that's all we hear from them. And I'll post about the form letters and the no thank yous and the please send some more followed by more silences if that's what we get. Why not?

Doong sa... do not be afraid.