Looking Forward and Back

First thing’s first: Happy New Year!

As I’m sure many of you did, I observed the national holiday on January 2^nd this year.  Though I did a little bit of writing, I opted to wait until today to upload the first blog post of the year.

One of the things I did on my day off was chat with my husband about my writing career.  My poor husband often gets his ear bent on this subject. Yesterday’s conversation started out with me giving a rundown of the contests I’m planning to enter in the next month or so. In discussing these contests, it occurred to me that I’m entering my sixth year as an aspiring professional writer. When I said that, my husband made a statement to the effect of having a hard time believing it had been that long. With that statement, I started to wax philosophical about the next step I wanted to take with my writing career.

Depending on who you ask, six years is or isn’t a long time to be at this game. It feels like a long time though, especially when you weigh in the changes in the industry. When I first started out, e-books were a thing of the future. Now, they’re taking over the industry which can be both good and bad and is a discussion best saved for another time. Despite this change in the industry, my dream hasn’t changed. I still want to be published mainstream. The thought of facing another six years with limited success seems somewhat daunting, but it’s not in me to give up on this dream. Rather than think of what I haven’t achieved, I decided to think of what I have accomplished.

Starting out six years ago, I didn’t have a publishing credit or contest placement to my name. In fact, I didn’t even know what a synopsis was or how to write one. Looking back on those first query letters, I cringe at how awful they were and have no doubt as to why the agents passed. Since then, I’ve become adept at writing the query and synopsis and have educated other fledgling authors on how to do so. I’ve also managed to get a few magazine articles published. On top of that, I’ve gotten several noteworthy placements in literary contests, including a first place win in the Reader View’s Literary Awards. Thanks to on line web sites that allow authors to upload their works and reach a world wide audience, I’ve gained a legion of loyal fans for a series of books I never thought would see the light of day.

Have I accomplished everything I set out to as a writer? Of course not, but I’ve made some pretty darn good progress. While I can’t say exactly what the New Year will bring for my writing career, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll continue making that forward progress. Who knows? This could be the year I finally make it big. Stranger things have happened you know.