Shopping for agents

So, I know it's been a few days since I last posted on this blog. It's just that, as one might sense from my other posts, I feel very overwhelmed by this whole process.

I had lunch the other day with a friend/co-worker. As we caught up about our summers, I got on the conversation about my book & this project and I felt energized and excited about my story all over again. My thought was (and is), "I believe in Harriet." (FYI: Harriet is the main character of my story named after the lovely Harriet M. Welsh of Harriet the Spy fame. Harriet M. Welsh inspired me to write. It just seemed natural to name my Harriet after her.)

I made lots of progress today by tackling the 2012 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market book. There is just a lot to do with that book and it's THICK. Tonight, I started shopping for agents that I'd like to represent me and found that it was more fun than I thought it would be. I have a trillion little post-its for potential agents. It's a start.

I'm going on a cross-country trip on Wednesday from NYC to LA. I know that I want to work on my Harriet project in some sense during the drive, but I'm not sure exactly what the objective will be. Writing queries? Editing Harriet? Adding more story to Harriet? Choices. Choices.

What is my patience level?

While reading Writer's Digest, they posed the question: What is my patience level to getting published? How long are you prepared to give to it?

My answer: As long as it takes. I feel like I've been dedicated to this goal of being a published author since I was 5 years old. That's 22 years I've been working towards this. I'm dedicated to this idea until I see my book on in a bookstore and on amazon.com.

At the beginning

So, as I began my journey to publication, it dawned on me that I don't have enough projects going at once so I needed to add another one. (That, my dear friends, is sarcasm. With my picture of the day, my daily journal entries, and trying to get published, my time is really eaten up.) BUT, this blog goes along with my "trying to get published" project so hey! It's not completely a different venture.

As I began the daunting combing through of Writer's Digest's 101 Best Websites, (some of them being blogs), I realized that I wanted to partake in this blog thing. In a way a simple concept: track my journey (in case my pictures and journal entries don't track it enough for me...haha).

I don't know where this will go...or if I'll stay on top of it. But at this very moment, I like this idea. So here goes nothing!

At the moment, the current project of mine is to comb through Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites and bookmark the ones I want to further look into. So far, I have bookmarked 8 sites to check out:

Adventures in Agentland: http://adventuresinagentland.blogspot.com

Agent Query: http://agentquery.com and their social networking site http://agentqueryconnect.com

Association of Author's Representatives: aaronline.org

Janet Reid: jetreidliterary.blogspot.com

Kidlit: kidlit.com

Literary Rambles: caseylmccormick.blogspot.com

I feel a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of diving into all these sites because it's so time consuming! But hey! This girl has dreamed of being published since I was a kid. Got to begin somewhere.

Oh, and if anyone is super awesome at formatting blogs and all those technical things, I'd love your help. This lay out is so blah.