The Writer's Market

My husband got me the 2012 Short Story and Novel Writer's Market as a gift for making it through Fall semester of classes!  With it comes an annual subscription to www.writersmarket.com (well, to their novel and short story section).  For $9.99 US more, I could upgrade to the full account for the entire year.  So I am now enjoying my full subscription!

This is a big step forward for writing.  For one, it gives me access to the Writer's Digest Community and forum boards.  For those of you who don't know, the Writer's Digest is a magazine that comes out monthly and has lots of articles and tips on how to keep that creative spark, make yourself marketable, make your writing publishable, et cetera.  It is a wonderful magazine.

I do not have a magazine subscription, but that is because, at the moment, I am more worried about my writing for writing's sake.  I'll worry about the extras (the bells and whistles, as I've called it) after I have something on paper.

However, the community and forums allow me to communicate with fellow writers about anything and everything we feel necessary.  Though once the semester starts I will have more limited time, I feel that haunting the site every now and again will help in more ways than I can think up at the moment.

The other positive to this subscription is that I now have access to contests, listed agents, publishers, and so much more.  With all these listings comes the information based on who's looking for authors and how experienced they are, or what type of things these places publish, and my goodness, I could make a list ten miles long with the helpful information you can glean from this website.

This is not some random website.  This is a great way to get your foot in the door of the publishing world and if you know how to utilize the information, it can be a great asset.  I feel like I've only scratched the surface.  I can't say I love the business side of things.  I am petrified of those first submissions and queries, but who isn't?

As a joke, I've already told my husband that he's going to be a manager should I become published.  He will deal with the business side of things, and I will deal with the writing.  In reality, that may hit closer to home than I think.  But, with my manager or not, I still have to know how the business is played so, time to pick up some serious information on that side as I write.  Otherwise, I'll have a novel with no home in the publishing world.

I've also been looking into Writer's Conferences as well.  Thank goodness, now that it is January more conferences are being announced for the 2012 year.  I'm still not sure the pricing and such of the recently announced conferences that I am interested in, but I'm hoping that it won't be a pipe dream for this year.  I would love to attend an actual conference.  Although, I'm not sure who I would go with.  I've asked my sister to attend with me, but I'm not sure if she's only humoring me or what.  Those who know me know that I am fairly shy, with fairly putting it lightly.  So going with someone may help that (I hope).  We shall see.

I'm just excited that I'm finally pushing myself to be a writer.  This is something I should have done years ago, and I'm not going to stop this time.  It means too much and honestly, it's too much fun!