Louisa's Intro

I wish I could, but it is highly unlikely I could get time off work. I am working horrendously long hours at the moment. Though if it keeps up like this I will be off work sick, though likely in hospital rather than trotting off round the country for conventions.

Aww, that's too bad. And that sucks you have to work long hours, I really hope it'll get better again soon. so you can find time again to continue your great stories!

And if you can go to the convention after all, let me know. Though I'm not going for sure yet anyways since "only" MR has been announced so far. I really want more of my favs to be there.

By the way, where in England do you live anyways? Was it near London? I don't really remember. Of course if you lived near Birmingham that would be even better then.

I am in the East Midlands - Birmingham is in the West Midlands. I am nearer to Birmingham than I am to London, though I have only been to Birmingham once - went to the SeaLife Centre there a few years ago.

I am still writing, just not as much as I was when I was happily unemployed. Now I am struggling to find an hour a day to write. Being on the computer all day at work makes me reluctant to switch on when I am at home as well. Makes my headaches worse.

I try to at least get some writing done at the weekends though.

Hi, Louisa! How's the writing going?

I actually found and bought a book at the student bookstore yesterday about formatting and submitting manuscripts. It's called Formatting and Submitting Your Manuscript (3rd Edition) by Chuck Sambuchino and the editors of Writer's Digest Books. It's a book for submitting all kinds of writerly manuscripts including novels, poetry, short stories, journal articles, non-fiction, screenplays, TV scripts and children's books. I liked it because it shows you the proper way to format query letters for each specific genre and what to do/what not to do in the process. Looked helpful. Maybe it will help you, too!

Hi

Going slowly at the moment I'm afraid. How about you?

I have a guide that someone online sent me that sounds similar to that. Shows how to format everything, what needs to be included and everything. Hopefully it will be helpful, but I am not at the submission stage yet for any of my stories.

I know what you mean by being "happily unemployed". I need to get back into the work world again soon, but right now I'm really enjoying just having time to myself, it's such a treat!

@Louisa and Dan - Wil Wheaton self-publishes his stuff and he's done some really helpful posts on it if that's the way you find you want to go in the end. http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/03/a-few-self-publishing-resources.html

Thanks for that. I have been looking at a few self publishing sites, mainly focusing on the one that is linked with NaNoWriMo and it does look quite complicated.

I think that if I got to the stage where I was getting constantly rejected and had a fair few short stories in the works I would consider self publishing as a single volume and see how it goes. Though with self publishing it is quite expensive from what I have heard. You need a pretty good fanbase from the start, or a lot of time to self promote (though you still need the latter if you are properly published as well, but perhaps to a slightly lesser extent).

As for the fanbase... I have a lot of people on my f-list over at LJ and at a couple of other places I hang out at on the writing threads, and they say they'd buy anything I wrote, but saying it and doing it are two different things, I you can't rely on that if you self publish.

I can't believe that a publisher wouldn't want to snap up his books though - surely they would make a profit simply from the name? Though I suppose it could have been his choice to cut out the middle man.

Yeah, I think he said he makes more of a percentage from self-publishing. I'm not sure if he's tried the old fashioned method though. It's been a while since I was a regular reader of his blog and I have the worst memory.

It's cool that you already have fans. It's always something you can point out to a publisher as well. It's so competitive out there, it's nice to have an edge.

I don't think publishers really care about "fans" these days, not in the age of the internet, where anyone with a computer can publish stuff online. LOL

That being said, it is a nice boost when someone says that they would read anything you write no matter what it is. I even managed to lure a few people into new fandoms or pairings which gives me a bit of hope.

Glad to hear you're still writing despite those working hours. Even if it's not much, it's better than nothing, right?

And I can totally relate to you guys, I'm happy unemployed too. So glad I managed to get a whole year of freedom after all, after the working office kept bugging me so much. Wish it could stay this way forever...I don't wanna go study, but I wanna start working even less.

And thanks for the link, Fifi, I'll check it out later.