Since so many of you offered me helpful feedback on my manuscript/book proposal, I thought I’d take a little break from my travelogue to give you the latest update on my agent search.

Prior to leaving for Italy, I sent four chapters of my much-revised manuscript to JW in New York City. For those of you who don’t have the pleasure to experience this, sending out a manuscript feels a little like sitting in a quiet room while watching someone else read writing you’ve bled onto the page. So, I decided that abiding the silence while in Tuscany was one of the best lines of defense ever. If JW hated my newest batch of writing, it wouldn’t hurt so much to hear about it while in, or shortly after returning from, Europe.

As it turns out, I didn’t hear from JW during the two weeks we were gone, but got a lovely email upon my return to the States. He’s not interested in selling the Bluebird, but he is interested in my writing and would be interested in working with me on something else – if the muses stirred. A mixture of relief and slight (really only slight, much to my surprise) disappointment washed over me when I read his email.

If JW had decided to sign me up and shop the Bluebird around to publishers, I’d begun to wonder how I would get the writing done, and if I would, in the end, be a huge disappointment to him and to myself. Plus, with the impending arrival of Baby Kintz in February, and at least 4 or 5 months more of reporting and research to do on the Bluebird as a whole, time felt incredibly slight. In the face of all this my energy for the project was beginning to lag, and I wondered if I’d be able to revive my passion enough for a publishing deal.

Don’t worry – I have had moments when I’ve felt my writing career might be over, and that I’ve already written my one good idea … I’m not that abnormal. But there’s also a part of me that’s keen to embrace the possibility of a new adventure with my writing, and my hope was buoyed by JW’s affirmation of my work as a writer, if not the “salability” of my idea. Now, if only those Southern muses would stir!

Gradually, I am learning that this thing I’m doing takes more faith and passion than it does ambition, and since I can’t seem to do anything else with my life other than write, I might as well keep at it …