Mischa Fox

Hello, all!

This week I’ve been focusing on editing some of my photography backlog. I’m trying to set some personal goals to work through them by photoshoot.

This week I’m working on my travel photography from my birthday to Cabo San Lucas in Baja Mexico Sur last year. I’m excited to share the results! (Which should be this weekend.)

Tonight was a much needed rest and recovery night.

For those of you who don’t know, I have a hypermobility disorder that means I need more rest than a typical person or I suffer extreme fatigue that can last weeks. I try to schedule in time reach month to let my muscles relax from the extra strain of making up for my weak connective tissues to avoid this.

I’ll write about it often and share what I’ve learned in blogs.

Tomorrow will be busy, so I’m glad I picked tonight for recovery and extras naps. I’ve got full workday at my tech job, followed by a meeting with my grad school to return for summer semester (I took two semesters off to learn to better take care of myself with hypermobility issues and work with specialists).

Most likely, I’ll go ahead with this. It will mean needing to strategically plan time off around the peak busy times at college—especially in fast paced summer courses—to avoid crashing like I did last spring.

It will also mean I’m limited to only 17 weeks this year to focus on writing and photography edits. That sounds like a lot, but it goes fast!

I will be doing a final proofread of my submission materials and begin sending it out to the agents who’ve requested it this weekend. I hope to finish the sequel’s first draft before school starts—which will mean jumping into it next week, when I originally anticipated taking a month off to focus on visual art and photography.

It can take awhile to find the right agent for you and your work, so I think this plan may line up nicely:

• Send queries and submissions out
• Work on the new book while awaiting a response before school begins
• Grad school should resume approximately when I start hearing back from agents
• Should I get lucky and find the right match, it can still take a year or two to go through the next stage (finding the right publisher, completing the editor’s revisions) before publication
• Graduation will likely happen about the same time as I get to the revision process (of course I could still be contacting agents—that’s not unheard of)
• My sequel will be far enough along that I should transition back into writing and revising easily (also using breaks between semesters to edit on my own) to not risk slowing down the creative part of my career

Of course, you never know what the time line will really look like in traditional publishing until you have both the right agent for you as well as a secured publishing deal. But in case it goes on the fast side—I feel prepared!

And if not, it means I get a slight breather to focus entirely on school, and I’ll use my semester breaks to query new agents.

I’m beginning to envision the next 10 years of my life more clearly, and I like what I’m seeing!

Tonight, I’m going to drink some herbal tea, listen to the thunderstorm outside here in Atlanta, meditate on a bright professional and personal future as well as the Leo full moon (though I obviously can’t see it)… and hit the sack early for my long day tomorrow.

Have a wonderful evening!

Mischa