So much for NaBloPoMo

I only made it a week with my daily posting for NaBloPoMo. I blame the NFL playoffs, as I was too distracted on Sunday to write. (Go Pack!) Unfortunately, I don't even have an excuse for Monday.

Monday wasn't an unproductive day though, as I sent in my first official query letter to a magazine! Even though it was only a 1 page letter, I spent hours obsessing over it. Now I know I will have a long wait before I get any kind of response, but just sending in the letter was a huge milestone for me. It's a good feeling to have one under my belt, and I am anxious to keep going and send in more.

Having never written a query before, I wanted to look at some examples of successful queries before I wrote my own. I took a writing class through ed2go.com and was fortunate to have a wonderful instructor named Eva Shaw. Eva shared several query letter examples that had been successful for her, and I tried my best to model my own letter after these examples.

If you're looking for a free resource on queries, I came upon this old blog by best-selling author Allison Winn Scotch. (I say old because she has since moved to a new address.) I thought she provided some great examples of queries here, and have bookmarked this page to refer to these examples again: Ask Allison

I also made sure to follow Allison's current blog at http://www.allisonwinn.com/ask-allison/ as it looks like an amazing resource to me.

In spite of my failure to write a post yesterday, I did look at the NaBloPoMo prompts, and saw this for January 10th:

Find a quote that fits your intention for today and tell us both of them.

That was an interesting prompt for me, as I had just come upon a quote earlier in the day that I liked so much, I immediately thought of adding it to my favorite quotes here. The quote was:

It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise. ~ Nancy Thayer

That quote fits my intention not only for yesterday, but also for every day, as that is exactly what I'm trying to do - revise my life.

I'm hoping this quote is true, and that it is in fact not too late.

And I think I will try NaBloPoMo again in February, as I'm hoping I will have a better shot at completion with a short month!