Time to suck it up and update anyone who cares about how being a professional author is going. I started attempting this seriously in November 2016, so it’s been about eight months.
feeling a bit like Sheldon right now
First of all:
Hello to Georgianna (what a cool name.) I was afraid it might be creepy to use your personal email address, and my contact page doesn’t show comments so I’m saying thank you on here in hopes that you see it 🙂
Second, Hi to Canada! The top number of visitors to my site after the U.S.A. I also get a lot of readers from New Zealand, the U.K. and India, for some reason. Whatever brings you to the site all the way from India, thank you and welcome. Let me just take this opportunity to apologize deeply to all of you for the psycho my country elected and express the firm hope that he’ll be kicked out of office in the next year.
Anyways. I’ve been putting off an update for 2017, hoping to have some brilliant news. TL;DR summary-I don’t. No agent, no agents requesting a read of my manuscripts and no publishing contract.
What I’ve done so far:
Collected a mounting stack of rejections, in many different flavors. I also have three finished manuscripts.
- The first one is a historical romance, and a learning experience. It got rejected 100% of the time with zero interest in even a partial request, which was my clue to take a break on that one. It will live in storage for a while, until I have the time to attack it with everything I’ve learned and all the feedback I’ve gotten on it. Lots of telling to be fixed to showing, it will need a lot of work.
- The second one is decent and I’m querying it in a casual way, seeing what kind of response I get. It’s full on erotica with a taboo aspect, a lot of fun to write. I’m trying small indie publishers with it and if they don’t like it I’ll self-publish it. Goal for that is next year (2018).
- The third one has been entered in two different RWA chapter contests (I hear if it made it to the finals in September, for those contests) and beta-read three times. It’s polished up and awaiting one more good edit from me before I start querying it. It’s a New Adult with fantasy elements and a good love story. I have huge hopes for it. Goal for that is to get an agent by the end of this year (2017) and publish in 2018. Fingers crossed!
Very Good News
An old post of mine is about entering RWA contests with that first manuscript, the historical romance in storage, and it may interest you to know how that turned out. It made it to the finals in the Cleveland Rocks NEORWA contest, novella category, which is really cool! Three different agents will now read it and I’ll find out if it won anything at the end of September. If one of them likes it they may request a read of the manuscript, which would also be amazing. Feeling pretty good about that. I got excellent feedback on it from each of the contests so no matter what I have a lot of revision to do on it.
What I’m doing now:
I’m the otter in this situation. My muse gives me the cups.
Three more manuscripts are in progress, in stages from 4,000 words to 25,000 words. I realize this sounds stupid but it’s how I write. I get all fired up about living inside one story for a month or so and then burn out on it and get excited about another one. Rinse and repeat. My muse is kind of a jerk and has no sense of timing.
It works better if I can leave the one that’s boring me and take up the other one, rather than trying to force my way through just to finish one at a time. I’m sure the process will change if I ever get an agent and have like, contracts and timelines and things. For now this works for me.
And finally, Somewhat good news:
I’ve been able to hunt down and kill . . . I mean get accepted for many different guest posts and articles. My two most consistent sites are Books Rock My World (Hi Ana! You’re awesome!) and Her View From Home. I also have gotten pieces on Mamalode, the Women on Writing blog, and Writers Helping Writers. I have earned: a grand total of 10$, many fun comments from great people and two passive-aggressive troll comments. Yay!
Hopeful and overly-confident, I’m trudging on. The biggest goal right now is to finish at least one of the WIPs and query the heck out of that third polished manuscript at the end of the year. Maybe by the time I write an update at the end of 2017 I’ll have some great news to share. Whatever ends up happening, thank you so much for reading along with me on here.
Featured photo courtesy stocksnap.io artist Josh Byers