You remember a couple of months back when I wrote about how I had finally finished my first book? At that point, I honestly thought the hard work was done. I had a complete book in my hands. And I let people read it. And they actually liked it! Smooth sailing from there on out, right?

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been wrong in 2013 alone, I would probably have enough to go ahead and self-publish that book on my own with all the fixings and trimmings. What? Self-publish? What does that mean? Honestly, I didn’t even know until just recently. Which is even more proof that I? Have no idea what I’m doing.

There’s a great show at Walt Disney World called Carousel of Progress. We love it, not so much for the show itself (which, honestly, is really cheesy) but for the catchy song that goes along with it. “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” gets sung around our house regularly, and here lately, I’ve taken to singing it in regards to this mystifying process of publishing, or in my case ATTEMPTING to publish, a book. It’s a great, big, beautiful process whose magnitude I hadn’t grasped until I was in the thick of it. And I’m still at the very beginning of it! I’ve read my original manuscript so many times that I practically have the thing memorized verbatim, and I’ve written so many query letters, proposals, and author biographies that I can turn things like word counts, genre information, and marketing strategies into haikus or, if you’re not into that, catchy commercial jingles. For real, y’all. I’m so much fun to live with right now!

All that said, I have no idea if any of this is going to amount to much of anything. But I take heart knowing that I’m finally DOING something about this dream of mine instead of saying that “some day” I’ll try.

And that? Is super exciting.