A bunch of things happened in 2009 that I'm happy about. The biggest and bestest was that I am now represented by an agent. What a difference that has made for my career and my peace of mind.
Other writing related stuff that happened in 2009.
Number of conferences attended: 2 (1 local, 1 national)
Number of Agents/Editors met with: 3
Number of entries into contests: 27 (yes, I busted the bank)
Number of finals: 9 (7 for YA, 2 for series contemporary)
Number of manuscripts that finaled: 3 (1 YA , 2 short contemp)
Number of requests for full from contests: 4
Number of full/partial manuscript rejections: 2
Number of tiara's won for most manuscripts finaling in 2008: 1
Number of new authors read: 35
Coolest thing I did: Roomed with my long time on-line buddy Lexi Connor in DC for National. We had a blast.
2nd coolest: Attended WisRWA's Write Touch Conference.
3rd coolest: I did NaNoWriMo for the first time and completed an entire book in a month, becomming a NaNo winner.
In looking at my stats for this year versus last, I can see where my contest journey has evolved. Where I used to have a 50% finaling rate, I'm now closer to 33%. I'm not planning on entering any contests in 2010. Time for me to refocus my writing on completing entire books instead of testing out first chapters.
Goals for 2010:
More reading. I'm going to commit to a book a week.
More writing. There's no reason why I can't average 500 words a day or more.
NaNo showed me I can write 1000 words a day (or more) if I have a clear story in my head.
More books finished. In 2009 I only completed 2 new manuscripts. Gotta do better. I intend to have 4 new books written in 2010.
For now I'm putting my YA stories aside and concentrating on Short Contemporary once more. I'm glad I took the break last year. I've returned to my favorite genre with a renewed appreciation for it.
Thanks to all my friends, old and new, for being there on this crazy journey to publication. Here's to all your publication dreams coming true in 2010.
