NYG: Get My First Rejection Letter

This is a picture I took right after I printed out Draft #1

For about the last six months, I have been working hard on a manuscript for a YA novel I've been trying to write. It's fantasy and one I've had jumping around in my head for a while now. Finally, I sat down and got to it. It's had a lot of ups and downs. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you've likely heard about it. I've been working steadily, trying to up my word count each day or time spent working on it. I've posted a few pictures of the manuscript itself when it was particularly thick and kept myself accountable by marking how much time I spend on it each month and uploading it to my Instagram to show how I've improved or declined since the previous month.

Like with pretty much anything I've ever written, it goes through stages of my loving it and hating it, but I haven't given up yet and I'm getting to the point where I can see the end in sight. (Though it will be part of a series, so it won't be quite the end.)

It's really exciting for me to finally have a manuscript that I haven't given up on and that I feel might be going somewhere. I'm pursuing my dream and that makes me so incredibly happy. I love it.

At the rate I'm going right now, I think I will have the manuscript complete sometime around May and hopefully ready to be sent out by the end of the summer. Let me repeat: THIS IS INCREDIBLY EXCITING FOR ME.

Obviously, part of this resolution is to finish it and get it ready to be sent to agents and publishers, but my specific goal here is to "Get my first rejection letter." That may sound morbid and/or depressing for those of you who aren't familiar with the publishing industry, but in my mind, I think it's a pretty positive goal. It would be naive for me to think that the first person who reads it is going to hold it up and say, "This is it! This is the book!" I mean, J.K. Rowling sent out the first Harry Potter book to 12 publishers who said, "No thanks!" (Man, I bet they're still kicking themselves for that.)

So my goal for 2015 is to get my first rejection letter. That means, I'll have finished the manuscript, sent it to a few close friends to get opinions, edited the thing entirely, hopefully have more concrete plans for how many books will be in the series, and have sent it out to at least one agent. Even if no one picks it up, this will be a huge milestone in my writing career and I will be happy with that.

And who knows, in a few years you could be settling in to read about the adventures of Maya, Jace, and Alice, all because this was my goal this year. ;)