Saturday, July 21, 2012

Falling Behind

It is always easy to make your goals those first few days or weeks. At the start of June I made a goal to blog once a week, send at least one query a week for Sky and write 15 minutes a day on Room. I was doing great for a while, but then as usual life hit. Even though school is done, I still have homework. I have to read in German everyday so when I start my class in the August I am not completely behind. I am working on my senior writing project so that I can defend my paper in October instead of at the end of the term when I am trying to deal with finals. So, its not really like I have any extra time.

I am also looking at a full time job, and so I am doing some applications and some online training to get up to speed. The kids soccer schedule is never ending. But on a high note my house is clean. With that being said, sometimes I look at everything I have to do and tell myself its okay to fall behind, and it is. I am a busy girl. The problem is, I want to be a writer, and so falling behind is unacceptable. So I will recommit. I will write a blog once a week. I will send out a query once a week (after I rewrite my query based on the awesome workshop I went to this week on writing queries by Elana Johnson, but that is a topic for another blog). And now that I have figured out what I want to do with Room and have edited the previous fifteen chapters to make the ending work I am going for an even loftier goal. I want to finish the first draft by the end of August.

Those are my new goals. That is what I am committed to and I will not allow myself to think that just because I am busy I can fall behind. I want to write. I want to be published and the more I do each day, the closer and faster I will get to that goal. So until then....WRITE ON... because I will be.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Done with School

Friday I had my last History class for the summer. I am officially done until August where I will have my last or second to last semester. It all depends on if I get into the wait listed class I need. I like the whole block class they offer in the summer. It is nice to be able to take two seven week courses, even if I have to sit in a class twice as long each day. I like being able to look forward to some down time. Which in my world means time to clean the house and get caught up on the millions of projects that get pushed aside when I am in school. One of those is the novel.

It actually hasn't been pushed aside, more like placed on simmer while I decide just what needs to happen next. I realized that I was making things far too complicated so I have stopped my 2000 words a day this past week and took a step back to make sure that everything is going to work before I take the next seven week and pump out the last 40,000 words.

In order to graduate I need to take 4 classes in the Fall. German 2020, History of South Africa, Roman History, and my Senior Research Class. That means if I don't finish this draft by the 27th of August when school starts again I can pretty much count on it not seeing light again until 2013. I have a habit of being able to edit when I am swamped with other things, but not being able to produce new material. So I guess you can say the Race is On! Hope to see you on the other end!

Write On!