The juices are flowing...

Maybe it was the run-in with a fellow writer who initiated the hope of a writing accountability group.

Maybe it was joining Magpie Tales and seeing some comments on my blog.

Maybe it was just time.

The inspiration for a fiction work has landed on me.  I'm excited and guarded at the same time.  Excited because it's a great story and I'm enjoying the company of my characters.  Guarded because I'd hate to see this project be the next in a string of abandoned stories.  Another reason for my apprehension is that I've worked some of my real-life dreams, goals and plans into this story.  As a kid, I developed this strange supersition that things you think about too much never happen.  So, as the characters live my dreams, does it diminish the chance that I'll live them?  True, they are living in the land of artistic license and I live in a more stark reality.  Most certainly the stories will not turn out the same.  The best laid plans, you know. . .

It is so hard to put these deep parts of myself on paper, eventually I guess, to put them out for the world to see.

Eventually... I know the basics of the process.  Get an agent or start writing letters of submission myself.  Get turned down a lot.  Keep sending letters.  Get turned down some more.  Hold out hope for the angel who will give me a chance.

But, I have questions.  At what point in the development of the novel do I start submitting?  Do I just send out chapter 1, or the whole manuscript?  How many pre-submission readers should I get?  What is the standard format of a manuscript?  Is there any rhyme or reason to chapter breaks, topic shifts, time warps and changes of thought?  I see those lines that look like this...

*****

... and wonder how the Author knows where they go.

Then, the Mother of all questions, pun intended.  When the heck, amidst my busy days of working and mothering and wifing does this thing get written?!