A Blog Is Born (The Purpose of This Site)

I wrote a book! Wanna read it? It's sooooo good! Can you please give me money?

I'm trying to find a more artful, and dignified, way of phrasing those questions as I seek publication of my first novel, My Life As Who. Although I have a writing background and degree (Journalism, Auburn '03), this is my first foray into fiction writing, and the process of getting published is as romantically intimidating as you would expect. I thought writing about my experiences would help preserve my sanity throughout the process, so that's why this blog is here. I plan to write about crafting query letters, trying to find an agent, editing my manuscript and maintaining hope throughout the inevitable setbacks. 

This is probably the best place for a little background about myself:

My name is Ryan Lee, and I am a thirty-year-old writer living in Atlanta. I've been writing since elementary school, when some classmates and I started a school newspaper, and continued throughout high school and college. After graduation, I was hired as a reporter for an alternative newspaper in Atlanta, and although I wrestled with disappointment about not working for The New York Times, I was abundantly proud to be paying my rent and other bills as a writer. The parent company of the newspaper I wrote for (and magazine I edited) filed for bankruptcy in November 2009, and since then I've devoted myself to the novel I've wanted to write for almost a decade. It is a literary novel broadly about the labels that we use to define ourselves, and what happens when those labels change in ways that we couldn't imagine. Specifically, it is about a young man who grows up on the South Side of Chicago (initially middle class, but in poverty at age 10) and struggles to understand the circumstances of himself and his family. 

I worked for the Census while writing my book, and am now looking for full-time employment to last me until I am swimming in royalties. I half-heartedly expected my financial pool to begin filling up as soon as I typed the last page of My Life As Who, but of course it remains bone-dry. However, my optimism continues to flow briskly, for as the protagonist in my novel says:

"It was such a painful moment, but it was so familiar. I recognized the hopelessness and the fear that I was feeling, and thought about how many times I’ve felt that feeling before, how many times I thought that everything was over and I was doomed...There have been so many times in my life when I thought I wouldn’t survive, when I thought I had reached the end. But it was never the end; it was bad, but the bad is part of life, too, and there was no reason to be afraid, no reason to think I couldn’t survive."

So I guess that's the first sample of my writing. I hope you don't think it sucks. That's pretty much how I've felt after sending a handful of query letters, even though my pitches have not included any quotes from my book. I have tremendous hopes for My Life As Who. I think it is a powerful story. I am convinced you will enjoy it, and this blog chronicles my attempt to get it into your hands.