Pivotal moments...

I started thinking about the process of finding a literary agent this afternoon.  Being a complete novice, I'm really just feeling my way along in the dark.  I came across this interesting piece about the need for, and the process of finding, a literary agent in Australia.  Sounds like it's not just a matter of flicking through the yellow pages (or a writer's magazine) and calling someone up.  I'm not very good with new stuff, and less so with contacting new people, so the thought of having to "put myself out there" is a bit scary.

However, talking it all over with Dave, I realised for me this is a kind of "now or never" moment in my life.  That is not to say there is a point when it would be too late (Okay, perhaps if I died, it might be a tad late to find an agent), but rather that knowing me, knowing what I'm like, if I don't do this now - if I don't make a move to get this manuscript published in the next 6 months (make the move, not get in published in that time frame), then the chances are other things will start to take over in priority and getting published, the need to have that happen in my life, will become less and less important to me, until one day when I'm 84, I'll look back and think, if only I'd grasped that opportunity when it presented itself.

Life is full of these pivotal moments - for me at least - and I can always recognise mine by the pinching and twisting sensation in my gut that says, "It's time to leap, Sif, don't even count to three or the moment will have passed you by".

In the next three weeks I'll finish editing the manuscript and writing the exegesis and then it'll be off to the examiner.  In the New Year I'll get it back (hopefully with an outstanding review and mark!), and then I guess my next step will be to take it to the Victorian Writer's Centre and get it reviewed there, polish it further, source a few agents and sent it off for their appraisal and PRAY someone is willing to take me on.  For someone who fears rejection as much as I do, I doubt there there could be anything more challenging than this process, BUT, the time is now (in a 6 month-ish kind of way)!

Do you have moments like this.  Have there been times in your past when you felt you needed to do something right then and there, but you baulked and then the moment slipped away from you like a satin sheet?