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Let’s start with the good stuff…my word count is 25,072. Woo hoo! Broke 25K almost 1/3 of the way complete. I figure the book should be at 80K for the genre it’s in and that word count will work if it is consider YA or Adult. Want to know how I came up with that word count? I read it on Colleen Lindsay’s blog post here .
Now everyone will have an opinion about word counts. There isn’t some standardized rule book everyone in the publishing industry follows. This is where accounting was an easier career choice. 1 + 1= 2 unless you were accruing over several months then there were different guidelines. (little accounting joke there). I am following these guidelines because they sound reasonable and I can tell the whole story within that word length and more importantly, I plan on submitting to Colleen so I will follow her guidelines.
On to other topics, Michy provided a writing prompt on the AWF here asking about good/bad customer service experiences. I am one of those people who will write letters thanking companies for good service and will ask to speak to a supervisor at a call center to praise on employee. I have worked customer service jobs and know how much it meant to me.
My best customer service is with my Farmers Insurance Agent Wayne Seyfert. He has covered my houses for over a decade. I have left Farmers only when the price is at such a discount at some other company that it is worth my while. Even when I wasn’t Wayne’s client anymore, he is always willing to take my call and answer any questions I have. His customer service skills are amazing and I know I can always count on him to answer insurance questions, recommend local businesses like mechanics and even offer me career advice when I was in the insurance business. If you live in AZ I highly recommend him. Here is his number…602.938.9554
So that is my customer service story. How about you? Have any great stories you can share?
I finally managed to finish my accounting job. Feb 2 was my first day of freelance writing full time. I managed to get a lot of writing done.
I had a goal of writing 4 to 5 Demand.com articles a day. I focused on that and by Thursday had 15 done. I hated it. Demand requires a certain format for their articles. You can’t deviate. It is very restricting. But they pay you on time every week.
Did you noticed I stopped at Thursday? My son woke up on friday with a 102.5 temp. It was a scary day with his fever going as high as 103.9 and him not recognizing me for a few moments. He was sick on and off until wednesday. The doctor said he could go to school Friday the 13th, but I kept him home because his immune system was compromised from the steroids.
So week 2 of my freelance writing career was spent taking care of a very sick 4 year old. I managed to write one article all week.
I also found out that I am going to owe a hefty sum to the IRS for taxes, my husband’s car failed emissions and we have to get it fixed before we can get the tag for it. Oh, and I got a rejection letter.
Overall a very bad week. No income and a rainstorm of bills.
I wish I could say I stayed strong and knew my choice to follow my dream was the right one the whole time- but I didn’t. I have been having some major doubts and have barely managed to keep my head.
Week one had me so sick of writing and then week two had me worried sick about my son. It’s been tough.
But here is what I have learned, which I already knew but forgot. I need to write for better paying markets and I need to write for a variety of them. My mistake was thinking I could replace my income- or almost replace it right away. I could do that writing 32 Demand articles a week, but I would be miserable beyond belief.
I knew this would be a hard thing to do and I knew that it wouldn’t happen overnight. I need to keep working. Wash, rinse, repeat as my mentor, Michy always says.
I am not a risk taker by nature, so this whole journey has been scary for me. Plus I have always been really good at my job. I don’t get bad reviews. So rejection is hard for me. It is something I need to get used to as a writer, because I am going to hear it a lot.
One highlight of the last 2 weeks was seeing my name under pending interview here. Pending author interview. That’s right, Rissa Watkins, author.
So I am ready for week 3 of the writing career. Here’s hoping I get some good news and make some money. Otherwise I’ll be trying to pay the tax man with copies of the book.
The proof is in the pudding? Anyway, what I am babbling about is why I lost the contest. That’s right folks came in 4th place. It was very close, so close in fact it came down to counting the editing mistakes.
I had more.
It is a very good lesson to learn- edit edit edit! Enlist someone else to help you edit. Also turn off the auto edit feature on your word processing program. There were mistake that my good friend Susan caught that I corrected- that showed up again.
See my rooky mistakes in this blog post in Michy’s editing & Proofreading Blog here . As soon as I read this post I smacked my head because the mistakes were glaringly obvious when someone else wrote them. I wondered how I could have missed it with my own writing. It is very hard to edit your own work.
I had some wonderful feedback though. I plan on cleaning up the story and submitting it to a magazine. All is not lost!
I have already sent in my money for this month’s contest. If you are a writer I highly recommend checking out this site and entering the contest.
Good luck!
