I woke up this morning feeling rather under the weather. Okay, I'm sick. I didn't want to admit it but there it is. Luckily my book is off to beta readers so I don't need to stress about that. Yesterday I was researching agents but that isn't something I'm up to today. I have a whole spreadsheet going. It's got the name and agency name, with contact info and a rating system of how likely I think they'd be to accept me. The rating system is likely to be a huge joke but it's a place to start. I also plan to keep track of when I queried and when I should start thinking about moving on and querying another agent. It's a good system, I feel at this point in the process. Of course, I haven't even started querying, so my carefully laid out system may be revised in the future.
So what does a sick writer do? She starts out her day by managing social media. I'm on Twitter (@JessicaB_Author), Instagram (@jessica.bruyere.author), TikTok (@BookWyrm21), and Facebook (@BookWyrm21). Some of you may have come to this page from one of those accounts. If you have, thank you! I manage those accounts by (hopefully) posting interesting content, trying to generate new followers, following back those accounts who are readers/writers/authors, and sometimes just entertaining myself.
Next, I worked on some ideas for a short story. I've been told it's easier to get a novel published if you've already got something published, as in a short story or two in a magazine. So I tried to come up with a short story based on the characters and world from my novel that I finished recently. Hopefully something entertaining and engaging that will catch the attention of magazine editors. So now the next step, after writing the story, is to research magazines that might be interested in publishing it. Sounds simple enough, right? Right.
After that, I tried to settle down to read a novel. I've been meaning to read a novel that I bought from a fellow author on TikTok. I've gotten about halfway through it and I've been meaning to finish it so I can tell them how much I like it. But when you're sick, concentrating on anything is hard. As you can probably tell by the rambling nature of this post. Today, clever is not my main strength.
So, in the end, I think maybe Netflix and a fuzzy blanket are my friends. I will put away the lofty goals of reading and writing while sick.
Take care of yourselves, friends.
