DevinHarnois.com

I got an offer letter from Samhain Publishing for Darkness at Dawn! I was so shocked I had to read it five or six times, and I kept thinking that this time it was going to say “sorry but no thanks”. But of course, it said the same thing every time: “offer of publication”.

I signed the contract the next day. This is all surreal and amazing. I’ve wanted this for a long, long time, and now here it is. I joked to my manager that it’s like being in a new relationship. I’ll just be going about my day, and it will hit me: oh my god, I’m going to be published!

This is a whole new world.

It’s that time of year again (a week late, but still). My resolutions this year:

1. Read more. I’ve gotten a good start on this.
2. Write more. I only wrote around 105,000 words last year. This is not acceptable.
3. Edit and SUBMIT at least one novel. I now have seven novels sitting around and it does me no good if I can’t get them out the door.

I’ve been frustrated lately. I keep thinking of all the time, all the years I wasted poking around at my writing and pretending that I was getting somewhere. I should have been more serious about it, a lot sooner. Over and over I get the sense that I should be farther along in my ability and my career than I am. I feel like I’m always behind. And yet I keep letting laziness get the better of me. It’s a vicious cycle, and I want it to stop.

The only thing I can change, now, is what I do from this point on. I can whine about yesterday all I want, but I can’t go back and change it (unless someone has a spare Tardis?). Every day I start the struggle again: am I going to be weak, or am I going to be strong?

Lillith Saintcrow has a great post on her blog: The Mystery of the Mask where she talks about acting like what you want to become. If I want to be published, I should act like I already am by making writing a priority and so on.

I’m going to try it, and see if I can fend off my laziness.