I will be back to posting NaNoWriMo updates later (I wrote under 150 words at the write-in today, but I did figure out where a bunch of other scenes will go, so I have a lot to work with when I start typing again in a little bit). For now I want to talk about publishing.

As in, I want to be a published author. And I am hoping to publish YA books, because I think they are awesome and I would love for someone to think my work is good enough to publish in the YA market. So I was excited and a little scared when I read about this contest on the NaNo blog called the Young Adult Novel Discovery Competition. The winner gets to submit a full manuscript to one of the top New York literary agents for YA books, Regina Brooks. To enter the competition you have to pay $15 and submit the first 250 words of a YA novel. So I cleaned up the beginning of my NaNo novel-in-progress, which I’ve titled Cursed.

It’s a little scary to enter a contest like this, but I am very realistic. I highly doubt I will actually win, or even place in the top five (who also get something). But $15 is a small price to pay to get my feet wet in the realm of publication. After this, I think the idea of submitting will be a lot less scary. But it’s also incentive to keep writing, to finish the first draft and start revising the hell out of it.

And then, if I have it revised to the best of my ability, I can ask for some beta readers to critique and be hard on me, and I can keep working on it, and then if I get the whole thing in good tight shape, maybe even if I don’t win this competition I will be ready to try to keep pursuing publication and to submit it to more agents.

For now, please excuse me. I have to go dry my feet before I catch a cold, and then I need to get some writing done. 2558 in the next 5 1/4 hours or bust!