Mid Month Check-In

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BFF!

I updated the progress widgets on ye olde website this morning (new code words for all my secret projects!), and in doing so was looking at my beginning of month goals and I thought I’d see where I stood:

• finish short story (I can SEE the end. I think it might even be on this page. SO CLOSE, Y’ALL.)
• new proposal (I have an idea, so YAY! But see below for more info on that.)
• finish cleaning out my closet (this weekend is the weekend)
• get rid of the furniture we don’t use anymore (ditto)
• finish babyproofing as Q grows more mobile by the day (some little baby crawled up our basement stairs yesterday so we are DEFINITELY gate-ing it up this weekend)
• put in the rocks around the AC units near the patio (Score! I can cross one thing off! And it look bee-you-ti-ful, if I do say so myself. I should really get in the habit of doing before and after shots, because this was a REALLY big improvement for about $40 of rocks from Home Depot)
  
• clean out the flower garden and replant (SB says he’s going to do this)
• create an herb garden (I don’t know if this is going to happen this season, plus I think we’ve decided to put the herb garden in where the flower garden used to be)
• Do something about the vines/weeds taking over our yard (SB says he’s on this one, too)

And when I finish my short story– which will be TODAY, God willing and the creek don’t rise — I can supposedly start on my new proposal, which I got a great idea for this week and which I ran by Sailor Boy, Justine, and Carrie, who were all appropriately cheerleadery about it. And I did indeed plan to start on it.

But then I discovered Camp NaNoWriMo, which is a NaNo annex for August. August, to be frank, is a much better NaNo month for me than November. (Also, you get an extra day. W00T!) So here’s my new plan for the remainder of July, writing-wise:

• Write short story #4 (tentatively code-named TBWHU)
• Finish the essay I agreed to write
• Do lots of research/outlining and prep-work on my NaNo project

With the intention, of course, of diving right in come August. (Though I’ve been told I’ll be receiving my copyedits in August, which may put a wrench in my plans. Also, I’m going away the second weekend in August. So we’ll see how all that goes.)

As I was filling out my Camp NaNo Bio, I realized that I have written 12 books. TWELVE BOOKS. Holy cow. And I’ve sold nine books (no, this doesn’t add up, because I’ve sold a book I haven’t written yet). I feel like when I make it to an even 10, I should do something to commemorate the occasion. Tenth anniversary is tin. Not feeling it. What’s cool for tin?

I’m a little agog at that. I know it’s not impressive for some of my friends, who have written twelve books like, this year, but given that when I started this whole crazy thing I was like “hmmm, I wonder if I can write a book the whole way through…” I feel pretty good.

In related news, I saw this announcement of a Harlequin Special Edition contest they’re holding. Back when I was trying to write category romance (2001-2005, and 3 of my 4 unpublished books fit into this genre), I never tried to write for SE (then Silhouette SE), though in the intervening years, I have consistently scored the SEs I’ve received in romance novel contests the highest grades. I wonder if I would have had success being a category romance author had I been targeting that line instead of Temptation and Blaze? Ah, the road not taken. Anyway, if your taste runs to Special Edition, you should totally enter the contest, because I like those books and new blood is fun.