So, after I wrote my first novel, I thought, “What the heck do I do with this thing?” And Google jumped to my rescue, as always. I can’t remember what exactly I Googled for, but I had a vague idea that I was going to have to find an agent or something in order to get published and knew it would be helpful to have some local support. In any case, I stumbled upon the Heart of Carolina Romance Writers and the Romance Writers of America.
I wandered through both websites, gleaning whatever I could. At first, I thought I’d just join so I could enter the Golden Heart contest. It looked like the Golden Heart was my golden ticket to being published. “Ha!” I thought. “I’ll just enter that contest, win it, and agents and editors will be banging down my door. But first I have to join. Grumblegrumble.” So I forked over the big bucks and even decided to join my local chapter. But first, I attended a meeting and learned a whooooole lot more that I thought I would.
Yep, I took a huge step out of my comfort zone and went to a romance writer meeting. And you know what? Everyone was super friendly. And normal-looking. I don’t know, I guess I thought they’d all look like the glamour shots on the back of their books and I was a leeeetle intimidated by that. But they all looked surprisingly like me and I immediately felt better. The first speaker I heard was Claudia Dain, who spoke on author relationships with agents and editors and professionalism in the business. Yep, writing is a business. That was lesson number one. And I learned so much that I didn’t hesitate to join after that. It was the best decision of my writing career thus far.
So my advice to budding authors: If you’re a romance writer, join RWA and your local chapter now. If you’re not a romance writer, consider joining anyway just because we’re so much fun, OR you could, you know, find another local group to join. Writing is a tough business (yep, go ahead and start thinking of it as a business), and you can use all the help you can get.
Joining a group also made me realize how much I didn’t know, though. Right away, I joined a critique group and got overloaded with agent lists, writing rules, ins and outs of publishing, sub-genre classification, market trends, and a whole slew of information I never even knew was out there. Here’s my one word of warning about joining a writing group: Your confidence (unless you’re a better person than I) will take a hit. Roll with the punches. I wish I’d learned that earlier.
Continued tomorrow, wherein I bemoan my low self-esteem phase but end with a Happily Ever After… at least until my next mood swing.
Last Year In The Life Of Sonja: Purity Test
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