The Writing Balancing Act

There is a best-case scenario on Pimp My Novel (and you can find it here) that outlines twelve basic steps in a writer's career. In case you haven't checked out Pimp My Novel it's written by someone who works in sales for a major book publisher, and the site is fantastic for market info and an insider's view. This person really knows the biz! 

So okay, looking at the twelve step program (I get the joke, twelve steps, haha) where am I in all those steps? The second one mostly, and I'm breaking Pimp My Novel's advice of casting a wide net with the querying. I know, I know-- bad Diana! I'm not query-intensive and I absolutely have to be! I get my thrills just having one or two queries tailored to this or that agent and that is doing me no good! Tell me how foolish I'm being. Go on! I need to hear it, because it can't ALL be about writing another novel. Writing and revising are just two out of the three parts. Getting the book out there is the equally vital part three in the tri-force of getting published (and now I'm doing Zelda references, so moving on...)

From what I gather, at the next stage, the miraculous someone-who-can-sell-books-likes-your-story stage, there will be even more to balance, with writing and promoting and understanding the market. All that (and probably much more) need to be pretty much continuous and overlapping. It's like the great circle of life, or that water condensation table in science class, or I don't know, reuse-reduce-recycle. It's all connected and it's all important.

Where are you in those twelve steps? Step one? Step three? Any lucky writers in step four or beyond? Wherever we are in our writing we have to keep up the balancing act so I say, embrace it! Let's love writing the book we're writing, and love querying or promoting the book we've written. But don't be like me...polish off that query and send it out there!