September

I've spend most of my working life in academia, and I now have a daughter in school, so September still feels at least as much like the beginning of a new year as the one in January. The school year starts, the days get shorter, the weather turns cooler (though in Seattle this year it never really got warm), and it feels like time to Take Things Seriously again.

To suit the pseudo-new-year, I've got new projects and resolutions. And to help myself stick with them, I'm talking about them here on my blog for all the world to see:

1) My editor sent me developmental editing notes for my Spring 2011 Carina release, A Marriage of Inconvenience, yesterday. I have three weeks to work on them. Compared to my first round of edits for The Sergeant's Lady, when I had just four days, this feels like all the time in the world. But I don't want to put myself in a position of having to do the edits in four days because September 21 just seems so far away until, oh, September 15 or so. I'll go into more detail about the editing process later. I started doing so here, then realized it was turning into its own post.

2) I'm also working on the first draft of a shipwreck novella called Uncharted. I'm about 10,000 words into what I'm projecting to be maybe a 40,000-word story, and I want to pick up my writing pace between Marriage edits. Goal is to have it finished and darn near submission ready by Oct. 31 so I can devote November to a new project...and that's only two months away! Better get moving.

3) Marriage edits permitting, November is going to be all about a new paranormal/fantasy project (I'm still not sure which side of the genre divide it'd fall on). For the second time in my life, I'm going to try NaNoWriMo, with the goal not a finished draft, but getting 50,000 words into the story and seeing if it's as cool an idea as I think it is.

4) I'm going back on Weight Watchers, with the goal of losing 20 lbs. by Jan. 1, which, incidentally, would take me below a major milestone by my 40th birthday (also Jan. 1). I'd started on WW back in March, thinking that I couldn't control whether I sold a book by my 40th birthday, but I could have self-discipline enough to get below said weight milestone. Selling Sergeant derailed me a bit, and it's time I got back on it so I can turn 40 published AND healthier.

5) Our new house is still full of packed boxes. By the end of December, I want to at least open all the boxes and look inside them, splitting them into unpack-and-find-a-place-for, donate/throw out, and long-term storage (as in labeled and neatly stacked or shelved instead of piled in the middle of the garage).

If I can do everything on that list by 12/31, I'll feel accomplished, and in a good position to make plans for the calendar new-year. We'll see. #5 sounds like the easiest, but I'm thinking it's Most Likely To Not Get Done of them all.