There’s this phrase that I love. It says, “Money likes speed.”

It means that if you have an idea or an inspiration that you should take action immediately and not wait. If you wait, you’ll likely lose out to time. Procrastination, doubt and all those other limitations will take over and before you know it someone else has capitalized on your good idea.

I’m not particularly money motivated but I am goal oriented and I’ve learned from experince that success is much easeir to come by if you act when you have the inspiration or the passion to do so. Waiting only makes it more difficult.

Knowing all of this it still took me five months to make the requested revisions. The wonderful team at The Wild Rose Press liked my query enough to request the first three chapters. I had another stroke of good fortune when they liked the first three enough to request revisions. Upon completion of the revisions I was invited to submit the entire manuscript. I was THRILLED. But it still took me five months to finish.

What Happened?

• Fear of success – seriously. This is a weird struggle for me.
• Fear of rejection – duh!
• Mixed priorities – I have paying clients who need writing work and two children to feed and put through college so the paid stuff tends to take priority.
• Time imbalance – when you spend every waking hour writing it’s easy to get burned out.

Despite what are all legitimate excuses for the lag time, they’re still excuses. I should have whipped the manuscript out in a few days, a week at most, and sent it right back. I didn’t seize the opportunity.

I finished the manuscript revisions over the weekend and sent to the editor. We’ll see. I’m quite proud of the book but I may have missed my window. I’ll let you know. This will be a hard earned lesson (one among many). It’s why it is so important to be almost single minded toward your goal. To the exclusion of other things if that is the case. I mean who needs sleep, right?

Don’t make these mistakes. When you have a great story idea, start writing. When the story is fished to the best of your current ability – start sending it out. When editors or agents request a partial or a full manuscript have the confidence and the oomph to send it out right away. Don’t miss your window of opportunity!