Goals and progress

I've been telling myself to update this blog with interesting entries, not pure promo.

It's still not happening. Oh well...I'll try not to stress. I'm a fiction writer, not a blogger.

Another thing that's not happening is the "writing every day" that I set as a New Year's goal.

But that's all right. I still feel like I'm making progress toward the real goal, which is getting back into a good writing groove after a difficult 2008.

Even as I set the goal, I knew it wouldn't happen. Some days I'm not near my computer from my quick over-coffee email check before work until I crawl home at 11:30 from belly dance. Some days I'm sick (like, uh, much of this week. It's hard to write when it's taking all your energy not to vomit.) And some days, other aspects of my life get in the way. Maybe that's not the right way to put it. Some days other aspects of my life do interfere; for instance I just spent several hours of what might have been writing time on mundane accounting and record-keeping tasks, an annoying but necessary part of the small-business side of writing, but not getting my characters any farther along in their adventures. (Yes, I was behind. This year I've been filing and recording as things come in. Last year, though, was the year of Epic Fail for my accounting and filing systems and I had to tackle a huge mound of paperwork before I could give the accountant something sensible to work with.)

And sometimes I just need to go and have an adventure with my husband and/or friends, of a sort that doesn't involve lugging the computer along. They're not always big adventures. Sometimes it's a day of card games and sipping excellent adult beverages at our friends' house, followed by an extravagant Thai dinner. Sometimes it's the beach. Sometimes...well, you know what kind of books I write, and I have to do my research. :-)

But setting that goal reminded me that writing should be one of my priorities. And while I haven't "achieved" the goal in the strictest sense, I'm certainly doing better than I was last year. Not bad considering I'm at the Dreaded Day Job a lot more as well.

And my long-delayed web site is underway. I don't know when it'll be online, since the designer took the project and promptly got sick in an "oh no, am I going to need body parts removed?" way. (Thankfully the answer is no and she's back on her feet, or rather back on her computer, but I expect she's a bit backlogged.) More on that to come.