Dear Readers,

This past June I switched from a teaching to a writing career. There's no

specific path to a writing career 🤨 so I make my way by listening to the experience of other writers and trying new things. I'm told this is creativity at its best because a daily dose of creating something from nothing is actually creation. I think luck, too. A healthy dose of luck thrown into the mix is good for everything.

For this new adventure, I'm thankful for my 25 years of students. Every day they walked into my classroom trusting they would learn something new and have a bit of fun along the way. I'm following their example. Hopefully, having fun is a predictor that I'm heading in the right direction.

So far, this is what 'learning something new' looks like:

April '23 - received feedback from a Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) agent, "To make The City's Allee (my newest novel) marketable, it needs to be written in first person POV" (ugh, I wrote it in third person POV)

June '23 - said good-bye to my teaching career to write full time

(hardest thing I've had to do in the past 27 years),

changed title of The City's Allee to Olney: 2009 (sense of place and time),

started rewriting Olney: 2009 in first person POV

July '23 - expanded research topics for my Website Blog,

realized I need help with marketing,

exchanged manuscripts w/SCBWI Beta Reader,

renewed library membership and voraciously read to enhance my writing

August '23 - expanded writing community: Writers Open Mic/

Brandywine Writers Group/Penn Writers/HTFL Writers Group,

started attending writer group meetings,

made lots of new writing friends who offer invaluable support

September '23 - freaked out for a week that I left a 'paying' career to write full time - but then got my head back on straight (Thank you, Paul!),

reached out to family member to help w/ website (Thank you, Meg!),

created a favicon (see the gd above),

worked on edits from SCBWI Beta Reader (Thank you, Laurie!),

started actively seeking sex-trafficked Sensitivity Reader

(Thank You, Sr Meaghan!),

sent manuscript to Penn Writers Beta Reader (Thank you, Deb!)

October '23 - cleaned up arraignment scene in novel (Thank you, Bridget!),

attended Villanova's School of Law Symposium

Combatting Sexual Exploitation and made great contacts,

the Director of a Philadelphia Safe House for Sexually Exploited Survivors (Dawn's Place) offered to be a Sensitivity Reader for Olney: 2009

November '23 - worked on edits from Penn Writers and HTFL,

gave Olney: 2009 to Beta Reader in my target audience (Thank you, V!),

received feedback from her mom (Thank you, Helen!),

over 1 thousand new visitors in the past month to geraldinedonaher.com,

a reader suggested I start a newsletter and add a 'subscribe' button

...So....

I created a Newsletter and added a 'subscribe' button

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Become a subscriber by adding your email here.

It's free!

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Have any other ideas?

I'd love to hear from you!

Contact me

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Thank you for my 2022 Beta Readers:

Deirdre, Alexa, Laura, Paul, Rich, Jen

🧡

Writers don't write in a vacuum. Feedback is a gift.

- gd

Best Quote From This Past Month:

 "Seventy-five percent confident will do nicely. Seventy-five percent is a goodly amount. Remember, we say that a flower is blooming whether

it is in half, three-quarters, or full bloom."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes