A September of Firsts

I’ve been on my writing journey for a few months now, but this September officially marks my decision to dive headlong into the #WritingCommunity. I launched my author website (which you probably already noticed if you are reading this). On the same day, I entered my first writing contest--the “Writer’s Digest” Personal Essay Contest. Contest winners will be announced in December, so I probably won’t share the essay here unless I didn’t place, but I can share that it details how the traumatic birth experience I had with my second son encouraged me to pursue writing as a way to heal (I’ll be covering that experience in more detail in my memoir). 

A few days later, I participated in my first #PitMad on Twitter. Despite not getting any likes, I’m still really glad I took the day off work to join my fellow writers in the competition. The sheer number of posts were pretty overwhelming (I can’t imagine how agents and publishers are able to find anything), but I read a lot of really interesting pitches, made some new author friends, and got a lot of support in the form of retweets and comments from fellow writers.

I also can say that I now am jumping into the query trenches in earnest. Technically I submitted my first query in July, but it wasn’t until September that I made my list of agents and started querying my full body of work (three picture book manuscripts). I haven’t received my first offer or my first rejection yet, but it’s still early and who knows what the rest of September will hold!