4. You finished a book! Most people will never manage that! Yeah, okay. I finished a book. Yay me! It is a big accomplishment, but it’s also one that I hit for the first time when I was 13. I’ve written almost SIX books now. It is hard to see writing additional books as anything but a failure—as in, I’ve written… Read more »
So as I recently finished up novel 7, I’ve been getting into the exciting/nerve-wracking stage of submitting it! Oh, the joys of querying. Anyway, I’ve had zero success in two contests now and so far no positive responses from the first batch of queries. It’s enough to make a writer want to crawl into a hole and say “Sorry for… Read more »
As my querying goes south, I’ve been trying to gather more feedback to figure out where I might be going wrong. Looking for new betas for my manuscripts. Sending my query letter through an intensive critiquing over at Absolute Write. Getting books on revising and editing to warm up for my next revision. Ah, feedback. It’s a double-edged sword, isn’t… Read more »
Maybe I’ve set my sights too high. Maybe, instead of getting published, my goal should just be to get a personalized rejection. At least that would represent progress over the past 10 years.
I have mentioned before that I have a positive relationship with my rejection letters. I have been submitting things and being rejected for them for years–honestly I do not even remember how long ago my first submission was. Sadly, that letter is lost. The earliest letter that I have saved in my collection is from the summer of 2004. That… Read more »
Well, none, because I’m not a dog person. But that’s not the point, obviously, or it would be both a very short and very non-writing-related post! So currently my beta reader is my boyfriend, after my other beta readers flaked out and he kept insisting he wanted to read some of my writing. I like letting him read it, but… Read more »
I haven’t updated the blog recently because I was really, really hoping that my next post would be one with good news. I submitted a couple of my short stories to a few different publications back in March, and I had a good feeling about them. Maybe something would come of it, even if just a little nibble in the… Read more »
I know that it all must be taken with a grain of salt (lots of big, BIG grains, as a matter of fact), but of the two people who’ve read my first chapter, both really liked it! I posted it to Scribophile and got my first crit there, and he started out with “I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter. It is… Read more »