Oh Embrace, How I love thee

Notice how I am skipping all of the sorry I've been away, thank you all for checking up on me, and am glad to be back? It's because I am so ecstatic about Embrace Books or Jane Holland to be specific. Most of you know I have been away for health reasons but the one thing I promised not to give up was my writing.

A couple of weeks ago I finished a baby I worked really hard on (I plotted). After two bouts of critiquing and heavy rehauling, I sent my top aces baby to Embrace Books.

Now here comes the good part I got feedback in an hour, actually it was 52 minutes – it took me 8 minutes to face my fear of rejection and open it.

I wish I could paste the email for you all to see. The editor – Jane Holland read it and liked, she thinks my writing is edgy, ME!

If you really want to know why I am so overwhelmed, go to her website and read her resume, she is all that and then some more.

Anyways she did point out something I knew I sucked at – Punctuation and Sentence Structure. When I saw that, I did a face-palm because I knew that was my weakness and I worked really hard on it.

Now this is how amazing she is, she went ahead to give me examples of what I did wrong and how I could fix them. I was really humbled by her email.

So guess what I am doing now? I have bought three no, four books The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, Eats, Leaves and Shoots by Lynne Truss, Woe is I by Cant remember the author's name and What a Westmoreland wants by Brenda Jackson.

I am hoping to learn from these books; Jane said I could study how other authors did it too so I am just going to be soaking up stuff. My amazing CP is reading Strunk and White with me. She is too amazing for words and is explaining stuff to me. Some awesome people from our blogging community have also offered to do some punctuation and sentence structure crits for me. I am so close to realizing my dream that I am taking all and any help I can get.

I also will share what I learn in my books in my blog posts in case there is someone out there who can learn something through me.

What have I learned from all of this? It is not enough to have talent or book ideas. You also have to work hard to hone your craft if you intend to make a career out of this. Watch out for the part two of my story, I am determined to get "the call" this year.



Xoxo

Joanna