Okay, in the interest of complete honesty, I shall admit that I stole this idea from my good friend Alice–she always finds the fun stuff before me.

But, happy holidays, anyway!

Click below to discover a holiday, well, not a wonder, but something…else:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1271768606

Yep, that’s the family.   🙂

Twelve Days of Writing

Day Nine:  Writing Conferences

I love attending writers’ conferences. Love networking. Love attending workshops and learning more about the craft–oh, and don’t even get me started on the research sessions (weapons, death, forensics–ah, so interesting to me).

There are big conferences that writers can attend (for romance writers, the two biggest events are probably the annual Romance Writers of American National Conference and the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention). But, if you don’t want to attend one of the “big” events, there are always plenty of smaller conferences held all around the U.S. (and world, for that matter).

Writers go to these conferences for many different reasons. Some go to have the opportunity to pitch directly to an editor or agent. Some go to pump up their promo skills.   Some go simply to be around other writers (Trust me, this is important! It’s nice to be around other folks who understand the wild writing ride.)

In 2008, I’ll try to attend one big event…and several smaller conferences, too.   For example, I’ll definitely be at the Silken Sands Conference in Pensacola, Florida, and I’d love to attend the Moonlight and Magnolias Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Ah, the thrill of the conference!

Twelve Days of Writing

Day Eight:  Track those submissions, baby!

So, yesterday, I listed twelve romance publishers, now, well, I want to talk about the extreme importance of tracking submissions. As soon as you submit a story to someone–a magazine editor, a book editor, an agent–you need to immediately write down that submission. I created a very simple Excel file for my submissions. I just created a couple of columns and listed:  Title of The Work, Person/Publishing House Submitted To (include address here),  Date of Submission, Type of Material Sent (i.e., query letter, partial, full), and Response (yeah, this one will be left blank for a while).

This is the main reason why I like to have a submission file:  So I can know when to follow up on my submissions! If you check out a publisher’s submission guidelines, usually there will be some sort of time-line offered for responses (say, 4 to 6 months). I never wanted to be a pest and hound publishing houses too early, so I waited until my time-line was exhausted, then, I would send a follow-up note or email.

Of course, I also like my submission tracker because it always me to look back over the year and see just what I’ve done. In addition to agents and publishing houses, I also include any contests that I’ve entered in my tracker.

So…do you have a tracker? If not, are you gonna make one?

Twelve Days of Writing

Day Seven:  The (Romance) Publishers

Today, I thought I would list links to some (12, for my 12 Days) of the romance publishers:

Kensington Publishing

Avon/Harper Collins

Dorchester

Berkley

Harlequin

Red Sage

Ellora’s Cave

ImaJinn Books

Samhain

Grand Central Publishing

Highland Press 

Juno Books

Twelve Days of Writing

Day Six: The query

Okay, I’m feeling a bit under the weather today (okay, more than a bit right now), so I’m afraid I’m gonna cheat on this post. Previously, I’ve blogged about the steps for writing a query, and, well, I’m just gonna link to those steps here.

I am such a cheater.