Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil (or) Happy New year!

Well, hello everybody! Happy New Year. Wow, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Coming to you today with a little confession: I sun-setted this site (aka, went on permanent vacation) so I could do more writing.

The truth is, maintaining a blog leaves very little time to write. I mean, you write…but not always what you want, know what I mean? So I took time off so I could dust off some of my manuscripts (I got a million of them! Okay, okay, I only have 45…but they were still dusty.) and send them out for consideration.

Did I revise and submit anything? Actually, yes. Did I sell anything? Unfortunately, NO. Did I come close? Well, yes, I did! I had three requests for “fulls” from as many literary agents, I had another agent tell me that my “voice” is unique (though she didn’t offer to represent me), and I recently learned that a manuscript I submitted in a diversity competition was one of only a handful of finalists among 300 submissions.

I’m proud of these few successes…but I would be even prouder if I had done more writing. That’s right, I went on vacation to do more writing and still couldn’t squeeze more writing in. The truth is, there’s more to writing than writing. There’s studying, reading mentor texts, critiquing, getting critiqued, and learning from the experts. And that’s what I did with most of my time in 2015: I attended webinars, took classes, offered and gave encouragement, and scrambled for time to write.

So, today I’m telling the truth and shaming the devil. I’m admitting that I took 7 months off from this blog and still didn’t sell a doggone thing. But I do feel I made strides in this gift that God has given me; this gift of writing and sharing your thoughts with the world. So sales or not, positive “strides” makes everything else well worth it.

And that, my friend, is my story. How’d you do last year? In the meantime, here’s wishing you the very best in your writing and your life this year.

Rita Lorraine