August 2012 EDIT:
Um, so it’s 1 a.m. on my first blogaversary, and to celebrate I went back and read some old posts. They were beyond embarassing, to say the least, and I deleted many. Then I got to this one. My introductory post. And I… I just… I dunno. It was too embrassing. I can’t believe anyone read it in the first place. I can’t even put into words how awful this post was, but even though I will never again show it to anyone, here’s how it opened: “welcome to my Blog!!” Yeah, with ‘welcome’ not capitalized and ‘blog’ capitalized, and the random exclamation point. This is not an exaggeration, sadly. The post was that bad. I was going to let it go, but I just couldn’t do it. It was too painful. So I’m rewriting it. I’m not going to re-introduce myself, though. If in five years, a novel of mine is published and a reader is going back on my blog to see where it all began, I want to say this: This blog has changed me.
When I first started it on August 13th, 2011, this blog was a route to promote some free flash fiction story I wrote and self-published on Smashwords about a kid who murdered his dad (I know, horrible, right? I had a sick mind even then). The story is terrible, I now see, but I didn’t know that at the time. I even submitted it to review sites–yes, review sites. This 900 word flash fiction story and I’m asking bloggers to review it alongside real, published novels. I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote my first novel, which I called a “YA mystery” even though the protagonist was 30 and it was like a modern version of THE MALTESE FALCON, and I was querying it at the time of the start of this blog, confident an agent would represent it. It sucked. Majorly. But I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything. I had no idea how to act professional. I had no idea what blogging was, or what twitter was, or whatever. I was clueless. But not just the clueless that all people will claim to be: I had no idea how to write well, how to blog, how to be cordial–nothing. I truly started as nothing. Just a bored student procrastinating summer reading, trying to do something special.
Today is August 13th, 2012. And I will say, I have changed. So, so much. This blog has changed me. Now: I’m an intern for Pam van Hylckama of Larsen Pomada, I just started querying my second novel which betas have loved, I know a ton about the publishing industry, I know the ins-and-outs of self-publishing and trade-publishing, I have published poems and short stories in non-profit lit mags, and I know how agents work, how queries work, I know so much about YA, and I know how to be professional. I have so many amazing online friends, I have awesome CPs (some with agents), and I feel confident in what I’m doing.
I’m going to bed now, and I’m sorry if this was a total meaningless ramble. But guys, I’m smiling just thinking about how far I’ve come, and I can’t wait for the day when I sell a book and look back on this revised post and think: Wow, I was an idiot back then. Because I will always be improving. Each blog post I write is better than the previous, each book I write teaches me something new, each manuscript I read at my internship helps me realize the problems in my own writing. I will always look back on something from before and realize: This sucks. But that’s okay. That’s the nature of improving.
If in five years you’re reading this and I’m a real author with a published book, thank you.
Dreams do come true.
–Me, at now 1:30 a.m.
