Between a funeral and road trip, it’s been a very long, rough week. Until Friday, averaged five hours of sleep for too many nights in a row and logged three times more car miles than normal.

Thinking out loud about the agent situation – i.e. no news yet, twelve days left on the clock – with The Wife, she shared a very good analogy.

A man is lost at sea. Delirious, God appears in a vision, and promises a rescue if he trusts in signs.

Moments later, a small fishing boat appears and the owner tosses out a preserver; the man declines. This was not the sign he expected. Two hours later a barge approaches, the crew also offers assistance. Again the man refuses. Surely God intended something grander than a battered dinghy and a rusty barge.

A faithful man, he waits. Patiently he holds out for the “big one” and lets nothing distract him.

Eventually, he drowns. Meeting God, he asks why the sign never materialized. The response: “I sent you two boats. What more did you expect?”

When the wisdom of this sank in, I made a list of as many signs – some small, many inconsequential – that happened along the history of this manuscript. I’ve been a bit too fixated lately on a big sign, without recognizing the more subtle ones. Looking at them with different eyes, some are far from inconsequential.

A very small extract:

1)After months of frustration, spent 60 consecutive writing sessions in a row working on the same 50 pages. The only goal, write 50 pages that read like a book. Made a deal with myself. If I could write something that I truly felt was up to snuff, I would continue. If not, to quote Mark Twain, I’d go pound wood. Never tested my hammering skills.

2)Handed a draft over to The Eight. From that, gathered good feedback and discovered a great way for field testing writing projects. One of The Eight punted on their reading duties, and enrolled a SWAT guy who became one of the weapons and technical consultants.

3)First agent approached about the book agreed to review the entire manuscript, rather than dicker around with synopsis and twenty-five page extracts.

And there’s others.