Friday, September 3, 2010

Friday Realizations

The wind blew me a little off course this week.  I had a deadline in no way relating to my training/interning, and, therefore, I'm incredibly behind.  I finished my Indexing course today (whew, finally!), and can return to the Slush Mountain of queries and partials.  The wind is blowing steady now, and I can get back to work.

And in case you are wondering, "Navigating" comes from my love of sailing, hence the (not terribly creative) wind metaphors today.  Writers translate their hobbies into their writing, all I could do with mine was come up with a snazzy title.

What I've learned this week in publishing (things you have to learn by doing, not reading blog posts or news articles):

1.  I'm suddenly a huge fan of the acknowledgments page in novels.  I used to ignore them; they never made any sense to me.  But now, I know some of the names of the agents and editors.  The ones I don't know, I go look up.  Besides that, this little page can tell you a lot about an author.  My favorite authors based solely on their acknowledgments pages: John Green, Libba Bray.  Green uses tiny, tiny print.  Bray acknowledges everyone under the sun (four four and a half pages) and I can only guess at the meanings in more than half of them.  Good insight into the craziness that lives in the most creative minds.

2.  Twitter makes me feel really popular.  It's like walking down the hallway in high school.  The more people you know, the cooler you are.  At this point, my follower count indicates that I'm still the awkward introvert who is determined to be Prom Queen.  Slowly but surely.  I see the shiny crown on the horizon.

3.  I guess number three is going to be something I wanted to learn this week, but didn't.  Perhaps you (my reader) can help me out here.  How do I get my readers (you) more involved with my blog?  I'm not some big publishing giant, I'm not unapproachable, I don't have vast stores of wisdom.  I'd like my blog to be a "safe place" for questions and answers: a conversation.  So tell me, what would you (the reader, still with me?) like to see in future blog posts?

Happy writing! (and enjoy the long weekend!)