Writing Withdrawal...Now What?

Last night I sent my revised YA paranormal/suspense manuscript off to my literary agent.  I expected to feel a sense of relief wash over me when I clicked the mouse to send it off, but instead, I found myself staring at the words "message sent" hanging on the screen, a feeling of angst and anxiety tumbling through my insides.

For the past several weeks I've filled just about every waking moment making the last push-- editing, writing, rewriting, wordsmithing-- and though it involved a great deal of work, my energy level and creativity hit levels equivalent to when I banged out the original.  I felt like my "A" game had returned and it was really like a writer's natural high.

I wish I could say the entire process was enjoyable, but it was not.  The first roadblock was trying to discern which nuggets of advice to follow when it came to rewriting the manuscript, and often those two avenues of thought were diametrically opposed.

Then came the surgery.  Artfully removing characters, implanting new ones, altering events and changing dialogue and then seemlessly grafting them together-- giving the story time to heal and recover.

In the end, I'm very happy with the changes.  Now the question is whether the publishers will agree, and that's not including the state of the publishing world, etc.  Probably not a great time being a new author trying to break into the biz, but that seems to be true across all industries.

Fingers crossed.