Mystery Writer (5)

How one Facebook message brought me from frustrated and upset to excited and motivated.

At the beginning of this week I was very frustrated. Even though I believe I've done a lot of good work on promoting my story, I wasn't moving up in the rankings very much. Or, if I did, I'd then slide back down the next day. I had pretty much decided not to do anything this week just to give myself a break and see what would happen.

Like I always do when I'm bothered (or avoiding work) I started playing a silly game on Facebook. Sometimes I get hooked on games like The Sims, even though they're just the same thing over and over again. I was grumbling to myself about how I should just put this time into doing something useful and that running the life of a little computer person felt like a waste of my own life when I got a Facebook notification that someone had sent me a message.

I finished doing whatever nonsense I was doing in the game and then looked at the message. It was from an agent. She said that she'd seen my story at America's Next Author and checked out my other work and really liked my writing style and subject matter. She thinks that I might fit in with a project she's developing!

I've had a couple short stories published by small publications, but nothing very serious. Will this be my big break? It's much too early to say, but I'm quite confident that if I hadn't joined America's Next Author, this agent wouldn't have noticed me. The writing bug immediately hit me, and I'm now working on a new short story. I'm also excited to work on my ANA promotion again, and even more excited that it might lead to something bigger.

It seems like this is always the way things go ... when you're just about to give up, you get some good news or a kick in the pants to continue on. I'm not saying that sitting around and playing  Facebook games will help you, but there's no harm in taking a little break to let things sort themselves out.