The Lift Hill

I'm a roller coaster rider. A huge one. The higher and faster - the better. I'm right there in the front seat. I luckily live only about a 1/2 hour away from one theme park and another hour away is yet another amusement park. Needless to say, we hold passes to both parks. We even made our family vacation last year to somewhere we've always wanted to go - Cedar Point. We even got down to Kings Island and fell in love with one particular coaster. We'd never ridden anything like it and since it was during the week, we were able to ride several times in a row.

So why am I talking about roller coasters? Well...because writing is like a roller coaster. Some days are better than others. You make your word count goals, or your don't. You get a really great review for a book you loved, or someone gives it 1 star. Like the lift hill on a coaster, as y

ou wait anxiously for the crest of the hill you can see ahead, waiting to hear on a submission is hard. You want to hear sooo badly, but yet, you also don't because it could be bad news. I just subbed a story on Sunday, so I'm at the very bottom of that hill at the moment, I know the crest of that hill is there, it's in sight, but I can't get to it yet.

So then, you get that wonderful news - they want it. That's like an exhilarating plunge that never ends. Until you're at another lift hill and you're waiting for edits to begin, to get that first glimpse of cover art. Then that chain starts clacking loudly again as you wait. Then, one day during that long climb, an email appears in your inbox (edits!) and the coaster drops down the hill again.

I think in this business, there's a hell of a lot more lift hills than anything else. That clacking chain is annoying but so worth the plunge(s)!