A Pretty Good Week

Well, after my concerns last week that my emails weren't going out, I found out that they were because I got two replies the next day. One was a "no" but was very encouraging. She said that she loved my articles, but her newspaper is for local news/events only. The other one, though, was for my first paid column. It will only be running once a month, but the pay is a good start. This morning I sent queries out to all of New York state (that took a long time to compile) and I already received one positive response. He isn't sure if he will be able to pay for the articles, but he wants to run them for a couple of weeks to see how the response is. So my column will be running in three sources by March (you can see my limited but growing list here). When I send out queries on Mondays it is only actually Sunday night America time, so I don't usually hear anything until Tuesday. But I am slowly building a publishing list and an audience, so it is just a waiting game now.

I also submitted a poem to Cha that I have high hopes for being published. I also posted a children's book I am working on to my writers group and got some good feedback on that. I am going to show it to Zoe and her cousins this week and see what they think about it before I look for a Chinese publisher for it.

It was a good but slow week. I didn't get much actual writing done, but running the business side of writing is just as important as writing. I am really looking forward to this week, though. It is Chinese New Year on Sunday, so on Thursday Vash and I are going to go stay with Zoe and her family for 5 days. Zoe wants me to talk to her family and write their stories down. I am hoping being with family and being around all their traditions and being in the countryside will give me lots of writing inspiration to work from when I get back. Happy year of the water snake to all my readers and well-wishers!