Guess What I Do For a Living Now?

Wait for it........

.......

.................... Waaaait for it.................................


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I WRITE!!! :)


You read that correctly, guys!

I quit my job a couple of weeks ago, and have just settled into the groove of living my dream: Being a Full Time Writer for a living!

For the last few months, I've been quiet because I've been busting my balls writing stories under a variety of pen names, as suggested by a guy calling himself Throwaway Writer who gave some excellent writing advice on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comm...he_first_time/

That gentleman is making ~$1000/day from writing alone, so I took his advice seriously. Before I'd heard of him, though, I knew the old adage "Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket," so I was already busy, typing away.

Well, it all paid off :). For the last three months I've matched (and recently far exceeded) my salary at my corporate job, and was able to quit.

It was a surreal feeling handing in my notice, and even more surreal when people asked what I was going to do, and I just responded "write." This was met most often with blank stares, because, lets face it, it's like I told them my garage band just got signed by a major label or something equally impossible.

I'm living my dream.

When I was a child, I drew books with crayon before I could write. In the 6th grade I did an assignment where we had to present on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a writer. I majored in Writing/Literature in college, a degree which everyone thought was useless and fanciful.

I am so BLESSED that I'm able to do what I love and fulfill my childhood dream. I thank God every day. It still hasn't quite sunk in.

I got lucky, but I also worked incredibly hard. Right now I have almost 40 titles out. Soon I hope to make enough money to allow my husband to go back to school and follow his dreams.

I just wanted to share and say that with indie publishing, it IS possible to make a living as a writer :). I did it, guys! And all it took was hard work, luck, and determination instead of years and a mountain of query letters.

Agent Query Contest!!

Hi, All,

Sorry I've been a little on the spotty side with my blogging lately :). I've had a lot of home improvement projects in "real life" (pffffft) that have been taking my time away from my favorite place: The Internet.

However, today I logged on to querytracker.net and saw This Little Gem. There is a contest running with agent Kathleen Ortiz, where everyone, that's right everyone who enters will receive feedback on their submission.

This is an excellent opportunity, so be brave and go enter! :) Go, go, go!

What are you waiting for? I'm going, too!

Good luck everyone, and happy querying!

______________
Update: Apparently the contest filled up after 2 mins :(. Popular, no? I didn't make it unfortunately. I'll keep my eyes peeled for other opportunities, and let you guys know! :D

New Writers' Forums & Things To Come!

EXTRA, EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

... or else.

(don't those newsies look like they want to beat you up?)

Anyway, I have exciting news for all of you fellow wanna-be authors out there :). There's a *new* and exciting place to hear about publishing news, interact with a cool agent, and get query critiques!

This week, beloved agent Nathan Bransford added FORUMS to his agent website and blog. Yes, now we can cyber stalk him in style, and on his own turf, too! (Restraining order sold separately.)

I went over there today to start helping out w/ the queries, and there are some cool and talented people there already. Go! Sign up! Strangely enough, my user name is RebeccaKnight. Let's hang out :).

In other news, I'll be posting and interview I did with author Lisa Dale on Monday! I read and loved her most recent book, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (women's fiction/contemporary romance), and now have her debut, SIMPLE WISHES on my Christmas list.

Also, don't forget to enter your ideas for my Deal With the Universe contest by midnight this Friday! I'll pick my favorite three and let you guys vote on what I'll have to do *when* (fingers crossed) I get my first book deal.

Any news to share on your end? :)

Query Letter Etiquette Translated

... into dating scenarios!

If you haven't seen this post yet, you should TOTALLY go check it out :).

Go.

Now.

I'll wait here.

Happy Friday, Everyone!

We're Gonna Be Okay

I wanted to share some comforting things I read this week from my favorite blogging agents, Janet Reid (the Query Shark) and Nathan Bransford.

Janet posted that she thinks blogging agents have terrified the wrong half of the aspiring writers out there: http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2009/05/weve-terrified-wrong-half-of-yall.html.

Nathan followed this up in his "This week in publishing," confirming that, yes, they want to reach out to the writers who don't know what they're doing, but those writers... you guessed it... don't read agent blogs: http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2009/05/this-week-in-publishing_22.html.

This is comforting to me because these articles made me think "Hey, maybe I'm not as clueless as I feel sometimes." Apparently we who read agent blogs are ahead of at least half of those querying out there. Now, doesn't that make you feel better?

Let me tell you, I've been very nervous that I'm not doing "it" correctly. I breathed a large and cathartic sigh of relief upon reading these posts.

How about you? Do you feel terrified about the query process? Do you feel better knowing it's not necessary directed at you?

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, and happy querying to everyone out there!

QueryTracker Carnival: Contests Galore!

Come one, come all, to the QueryTracker 2nd Anniversary Carnival!

All this week there will be fun contests and the opportunity to win fabulous prizes over at querytracker.net.

Follow this link for more details and to play along:

http://www.querytracker.net/carnival.php.

Also, to get an entry to the AWESOME GRAND PRIZE (a free website design), email Elana J, or comment on querytracker.net to get your name in that drawing.

Best of luck to you guys, and HAPPY 2ND ANNIVERSARY, QT!

It's my favorite website for writers and where I get the best support from my peers.

Go hang out, have fun, and good luck in the contests! :)

I'm Back!

Hi, All,

I'm sorry I've been strangely absent both from this blog, and from QueryTracker lately. The husband and I have been busting some ass this past week on getting our house ship-shape for an appraisal and.... whew... yeah. Instead of blogging I crawled into bed each night panting and clutching my heart. (Okay, it wasn't all that bad, but I hate housework ;)... and there was LOTS of it.)

Anyway, I was back today, reading blogs and getting caught up in InternetLand, and came across this great post by Nathan Bransford, agent extraodinarre:

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2009/05/hoops-vs-hints.html.

I know I've heard a lot of my fellow queriers getting discouraged or disgruntled because of all the so-called "hoops" we have to jump through, so I want to know:

What do you guys think?

Are the "hoops" a necessary evil, or helpful hints on how to get noticed?

I'm a rule follower by nature. I like plans laid out before me that say "if you do X and Y you will be noticed because of your hard work." I like working hard, and I like having clear cut guidelines.

However, I've recently come to realize I may be a freak.

Is there anyone else out there that says "Yay, guidelines! I'm going to kick some ass!" or do you think "Damn hoops! Why do we have to do these things?"

I can see both sides, and I'd love to know :).

Hoops or hints?

Helpful Hints: Honing Your Pitch

Today I was surfing over in Query Shark-infested waters, and found this awesome link: http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-put-it-together-into-one-neat.html.

Thank you to Janet Reid for posting it! We love you!

I'm thinking of revisng my query, and found this exercise extremely helpful. There were a few really crucial pieces of my plot that I was just plain missing.

As you guys from Query Tracker may have noticed, I'm a bit of a minimalist when it comes to my query, but am slowly learning that while less is more.... sometimes you just have to show a little more and hope for the best ;).

I'm rewriting, and will attempt to become Query Shark bait soon.

I hope this post is helpful for you guys, too!

Any tips of your own? Please share!

QueryDay Lessons: Sharing is Caring!

I participated in the Fabulous QueryDay today on Twitter (well, ok, lurked), and wanted to say that IT ROCKED!

Strangely enough I wished there was a wee bit less asking of questions and little bit more query rejecting. Weird, right? However, even though I missed a little bit of the old "fail," I did have a great time reading the questions other writers had and the answers from the agents.

One thing that absolutely blew my mind was this: Agents prefer only one space after a period!

Holy Uncomfortable Wrongness, Batman!

My whole life I've been living a lie. Everyone told me this was correct from birth until now, and I just learned today that the publishing world prefers the one-space rule. Agent Colleen Lindsay said it looked funny on her e-reader when there were two spaces, creating vast deserts of whiteness that was hard to look at.

Who the heck knew?

While I was crying over the thought that I'd now have to go through my manuscript sentence by sentence and remove the offending extra-spaces, I had an epiphany I would like to share. You can do a Search & Replace in Word by typing in Search For *space space*, Replace With *space.*

Magnifico! Technology to the rescue :). Needless to say, I love Bill Gates right now, and am grateful that Microsoft Word is so awesome.

I hope this helps any of you just now learning this same fact and thinking "blimey, so many spaces...so maaaaaany!"

Tell me: am I truly the last person on earth to discover this rule?

Happy Friday, Everyone!

#QueryFail 2: Queries Never Die

Remember all of that intarweb hoopla a couple of weeks ago caused by #Queryfail on Twitter, and the scathing responses in #Agentfail?

Well, hold onto your hats, because tomorrow is #Queryfail 2: Queries Never Die! It's actually been renamed, which I think is sort of cool, to #Queryday, so please make sure you search for that if you're going to follow it.

Here's the link to agent Colleen Lindsay's post about it: http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2009/04/heads-up-rules-for-queryfail-2-queries.html.

The agents have really taken the feedback they received to heart and are aiming to make this a more friendly, educational day.

I was morbidly fascinated by the first round of #Queryfail, but am even more excited about #Queryday. We get to ask questions as well as seeing the query-readage in real time. SWEEEEET!

So? Who's in? :D

Agent for a Day!

Today I participated in Nathan Bransford's blog contest "Agent for a Day."

To my surprise and delight, going through queries is FUN AS HELL! If you haven't already, I recommend you get yourself over to http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/, read the rules, and dive on into the slush pile! The water's fine.

Basically, I got the chance today to sift through 50 real queries and decide if I loved them enough to request some sample pages. We could only request a total of 5 out of the 50, to make it realistic (agents can't help their clients if they are waist-deep in sample chapters, after all), which was the hardest part.

I read each and every query and found at least 7 that I really, really liked. THEN I had to go through the agony of paring it down to those I absolutely loved.

I see much more clearly now that when an agent rejects you, it may not be because your writing stinks or your query is poor. It could be that they are just in "like" with your project, but not head-over-heels in love with it.

And it has to be true freakin' love when you have that many queries to get through in a day.

So, KUDOS to all the agents out there :). I love your job, and I can see why a lot of you really enjoy reading queries on a day to day basis. But I also get how hard it is to reject people, why you need form letters just to keep on schedule, and that you have to be truly nuts about a book before you can say that fateful "Yes."

Good luck to all you queriers out there, and remember: sometimes it's not you. It's the slush pile.

Book in a Nutshell Contest!

The Knight Agency is having a contest called "Book in a Nutshell," which is exactly what it sounds like. They would like to see your book condensed into a deliciously chewy three sentence nugget, using 150 words or less. Up for the challenge? Brevity can be the biggest challenge of all, as many of us know.

The details are listed on their blog, http://knightagency.blogspot.com/, posted 3/24/09. Best of luck to everyone!

They are looking for the top 20 entries, who will then be checked out by their very own agents. Can there be a better prize than that? I've already queried them, so we'll see how it goes :). Woot!

Progress update!

Hello, All,

This is my first attempt at blogging so.... be gentle.

I feel like I should tell you a little about myself and what I hope to accomplish with this blog. I've just finished my first novel, and am trying to join the wonderful world of The Published Author. However, now I have a new and daunting task: I have to make more novels!

My goals with this blog are to keep myself accountable by blogging about how the writing's going, and also give you writers who are on the same path a look at how another of your kind works, lives, and keeps from slipping into the abyss of "no one will ever publish me, maybe I should just dig ditches for a living."

My finished novel is a 92,000 word quest fantasy called LEGACY OF THE EMPRESS about an 18 year old girl imprisoned in her mother’s castle for over a decade. She escapes using a book of magic, and realizing the dark magic that corrupted her family is spreading throughout the kingdoms of her land, journeys to find an imprisoned Empress who banished the same dark power centuries before. As she faces the darkness in herself, she realizes that saving the land she loves may ultimately mean watching it burn.

The novel I'm working on now currently doesn't have a name, but is more of a post-apocalyptic fantasy involving a city with mile-high buildings, giant plague rats, and zombies. Right now, I've only got an outline and 13 pages, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

I would love for this to be a forum where writers, new and published, can get together to share tips, questions, theories, etc. This is a blog for all of us--go for it!

I'd love to hear from you.

After all, if we writers love anything in this world, it's procrastination.