New Year's Wishes

by Elizabeth

Happy New Year to everyone!

This is the year I hope to query, land an agent, and sell my first book. Publication itself will likely wait until 2015, but those three are plenty of excitement for one year, I think.

And what of you? I wish you well, writers and readers, friends and strangers all.

If you want to write, I hope this is the year you write. Pick up your pen, fire up your computer, decide enough is enough and don't worry whether it's good enough. It is, I promise. Just write.

If you hope to finish a manuscript that has been nagging at you for months or years or a lifetime, my wish for you is that this is the year you put a period on the last page and write "the end."

If you are polishing a project you have spent time with, agonizing and thrilling and laughing and crying along with it, my wish for you is that this is the year you see it shine and glow to your satisfaction.

If you are querying, my wish for you is that very soon, an agent picks up the phone and dials your number and changes your life just a little bit.

If your agent is trying to sell your book, my wish for you is that an editor picks up the phone and calls your agent and makes you the best offer for you, the best offer for your book, your career, your life, and that it changes your life just a little bit, just the right amount.

If you are working on your next book, my wish for you is that it not only flies out of your pen, but is better than the last one. It happens, and I fervently hope it happens for you.

The new year is a time of hope, reflection, new beginnings. Here's to a wonderful 2014, whatever that means for each of you, each of us. This can be the best one yet. My hope for all of us is that is exactly what we will say it was one year from today.