Question 1: How do you juggle between your life and your social media life? Can you give me just an overall schedule of how it is or just a skinny You don't have to tell me I'm just wondering! Submitted by ImaJINary_Lights

To be honest, I don't really think of myself as good at social media? I definitely prioritize writing, and I feel like working on your writing craft is what will make you a great writer, not social media. Though social media does seem to have growing importance, so I would just say to find the platforms that you truly enjoy and invest in those, and not try to do everything at once. I like Instagram, but I barely ever use my Twitter XD. I guess I don't really feel like I juggle between them because I usually just post to social media when I feel guilty that I haven't done it in awhile, haha.

Unless you're more of asking how do I juggle between life and author life (like writing and social media included?) For my writing, I don't really have a set schedule. I used to write when I dropped the kids off at the gym daycare, but now that that's closed I write during y kids naptimes or whenever I can get someone to babysit them ;) Since life is ever evolving, my schedule has to be ever evolving as well. I think for me the most important thing is not mindlessly scrolling, or doing things other than writing when I have that rare moment when no one is screaming/crying/pooping/needing my attention. I also have learned to do things like listening to music that inspires me, and give up on perfection. Really I just seize whatever small moments I can and eventually they add up to something! If you only wrote one page every day, at the end of the year you'd still have a 365 page book, so don't dismiss those small moments!

Question 2: Hey! So I'm an aspiring writer (at least I think I am XD) and I've read a few chapter of your book. I think your writing is greattttt :-)So you recently said that your getting your book published. CONGRATSSSSSI kinda wanted to know about the procedures and other stuff about how you get a book published. Like how is it done??Also, can u tell me about the degree in creative writing???? Thank you for your time :-) Submitted by DESTINY5611

You write, therefore, you are a writer! Don't sell yourself short! These are awesome questions, let's see if I can answer them all...So I think the first think about getting published, really isn't about publishing. It's about writing. So many people put the cart before the horse, so to say, and dream of publishing when they need to work on becoming a better writer. My advice is imagine you have to write a million crappy words before you write something publishable, so stop worrying about being published and focus instead on the writing, and learning to love and grow in that. As for my personal journey as a writer, here is a bit of background on me from my website:

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Hannah spent most of her childhood reading books, climbing trees and exploring the mountains of Idaho. She often fell asleep to her father telling her stories he'd adapted from his favorite novels; books like The Hobbit, The Three Musketeers and The Princess Bride.

In high school she interned at Zoo Boise where she fell in love with the animals and their stories, and thus decided to enroll at the University of Idaho as a Wildlife Biology major. Three years into the degree, with only 4 credits left, she realized she'd financed her entire college education with money she'd made from writing competitions. Instead of returning to the UI, that summer she married her high school sweetheart and the pair spent 5 weeks backpacking through Europe before they moved to Madison, Wisconsin. Her husband began graduate school, and Hannah began to write a novel about a young woman also separated from her family. In 2015, Hannah was accepted at the University of Wisconsin as an English major and she began to upload her novel to Wattpad. She named it The Last She.

Within five months of joining Wattpad, The Last She was ranked third on Wattpad's Science Fiction Hot List with 45 K reads. In nine months it had 400K reads and came to dominate the Science Fiction Genre, most often ranked number one on the Science Fiction Hot List. In 2016 it was one of the, read for a combined 6,205,371 minutes, and won in both The Watty's and The Fiction Awards. In 2017, it was the most read science-fiction novel on Wattpad.

blah, blah, blah, other stuff, you get the idea ;)

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You don't need a degree in English or Creative Writing to be a writer (cuz you already are a writer, remember?;), but I would say you should take any opportunity you can to improve. I feel like Wattpad itself has given me so many resources and opportunities to improve. I think the fastest way you will improve is by having better writers than you critique your work, and the second fastest is to have other writers critique your work. And of course, making sure you are actually writing! I realize that I come from a place of enormous privilege to have been able to go to college and study writing, and I don't ever want someone to be discouraged because they don't have that same opportunity. There are so many free resources out there available to improve. And at the end of the day, there are many successful authors who don't have degrees! I am very helpful I got to study Creative Writing, but for me the most helpful part of the whole degree was working with the professors on my books and short stories, and you can find writing workshops online too!

I always hesitate to tell people to get a degree in Creative Writing, because it can be really, really hard to make a living! (I'm not anywhere close to making a living off my writing, and I've been fairly successful on Wattpad). That's why I got a degree in Wildlife Biology first, and then sort of realized that writing was the only thing that I wanted to do, and I wouldn't be happy do anything else. If you feel like that, then consider a degree in English, but realize that almost all authors work a daytime job as well, so make sure you consider what that could be as well! I think Brandon Sanderson does a really good job in his free Youtube class about talking about how long it can take to become an author. I believe it took him something like 10 books? (I posted this class in the chapter on writing resources.) I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I think it takes talent, time and luck to be successful enough to support yourself only with writing, so I really encourage people to see the writing in and of itself as the success. 

As for the actual process of being published, I'm still learning that myself. However, the beginnings of it is that you finish your manuscript, and when it as good as it can possibly be, you write a query letter to an agent, and if they like it, they will sell it to a publisher. I would recommend checking out Pitch Wars, as this is an excellent way to be mentored in this process.

Hope this helps! Full confessions, I don't often check the comments here, so if you have another question, post in on my profile, and if I haven't already answered it in this book somewhere, I'll get to it when I can. 

Thanks guys!