The month long workshop I’ve been taking called “Supermom: The Art of Juggling Motherhood and a Writing Career” has come to an end and it was worth every penny I spent. While I’m still adjusting to my new routine, I’ve been more productive in the past month than I have been all year. It’s exhilarating and exciting. If you get the opportunity to take this workshop, I highly recommend that you do so. Check out the Eliza Knight website for more information.
As my revisions roll along and I get closer to the final “The End” – before an agent or editor gets hold of it – I find myself getting a little nervous. Scared shitless, actually. Because once it’s done, I’ll have to submit it. That’s the whole point of this. It’s why I joined Romance Writers of America and Virginia Romance Writers. It’s why I drive down to Richmond each month for meetings. It’s why I spend money on online workshops and critique services. So that my books will be published. And in order to get published, you have to submit. To contests. To agents. To editors. No one will read your book if you keep it to yourself.
I’ve received two rejection letters in my writing career. The first was in 1997 when I submitted a manuscript entitled Purple Horizons to Harlequin for their Temptations line. (Don’t sleep on the title- it related to the story ) That rejection affected me deeply and I packed away my floppy disks for 9 years. The second happened in 2007 when I sent the first version of my current wip (work in progress) to Silhouette Nocturne, only to be told that it wasn’t right for their line. (Code for: It sucks!) This time, I didn’t stop writing. Instead, I figured out how to make the story better. And so the time will come when I will again submit my manuscript to someone who will take a few days to read what it took me a few years to complete. And that someone gets to decide if it will be published for others to read or resigned to the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. Am I ready for that? Yeah, I am.