It's a wrap!

Holiday break is here!!!

My husband landed a job, which involves relocation to Vancouver, WA. We're excited to explore another part of the beautiful Northwest!

The writing stats for this year:
1 book started, edited and submitted. Because of Scrivener, there was no major story reconstruction and hours of reordering during the first pass of revisions.

2 former books torn apart for the indie market, the first- which is a young YA or older Tween is in final edits.

I'm snowflaking a new story idea over the holiday break. No hard writing goals just writing as pockets of time come open. I'll be back in January 2012 with a new series on snowflakes, Scrivener and getting the story right in the first draft.

Have a WONDERFUL holiday! Wishing each of you days filled with Merry and Happy and Bright!

The Season of Want

My youngest daughter, updated her Christmas list - decorated and glittered and hanging on the fridge - the other day. There, at the very bottom and written in pencil so it kind of blended with the red construction paper, she'd written:
"For my daddy to get a job"

Yes, I got all blurry-eyed and felt that Grinch-heart expansion that stole my breath and made me have to hold up the fridge a few minutes. And yes, my biggest want this Christmas season - even with a book on submission - is for my husband to land a job. We'll be fine, we're fortunate I'm working. His going through this has been tough because I can't fix it, can't even attempt to fix it. And he's excellent at what he does and is a hard worker and SO didn't deserve to be caught without a chair when the music stopped. The Mom part of me knows it's life and life's not always fair, just like I've had so many talented writer friends passed up by agents and publishers and reviews. It happens. (Insert boo-hiss here!)

But the re-org which organized him out of a job has been a blessing in disguise. It's made us ask hard questions like:
How do I want to live?
What's most important?
Am I doing what I LOVE?

This same line of questions pack the same punch when you turn them to writing. Especially the last question, in this season on want. Are you writing what you love to read? Are you writing a story you love or writing a story you think you should be writing? It's the details we ignore until we have to which seem to make us grow the most. And like any other type of growing, there are periods where some sort of pain is involved...but in the end, things are better, bigger or even both :D

Online or Offline or Compromise?

I love this quote! It's in my writing nook, reminding me where I must spend my time. Because whether you're an indie author or a traditional author, we all have the same 24 hours in each day.

The trick is staking out enough time for writing and leaving some time for hanging out online with other writers. I have learned more through blogs and the Blue Boards and tweets than I would have ever imagined!

I enjoy reading blogs...but doing so requires actual stretches of time. There are SO many excellent blogs available for writers no matter which stage in the journey.

And blogging here is also fun, but as my entries show, less than regular.  Part of me knows I should work on building a readership, but the other part is aware of how important, how CRITICAL working on the book is.

Not to mention, it's a daunting task to carve a blogging niche and standout! My heart and interests are telling me where my focus should be, but it will take some time to get organized.

I <3 Twitter as a compromise of writing faithfully and still allowing some time to hang with other writers. A few minutes in the Twitterverse catches me up on all the good news, publishing world headlines and writer's life snapshots eloquently captures in 140 characters. It's amazing and I'm thankful we have something like Twitter as a happy compromise to stay online and off...so we can continue working on the Important things and still stay connected when we surface!