My weekly, Friday update....
Wow! It has been a minute and there have been some wild times for me over the past several weeks. I've vacationed out in San Diego, CA and Havasu, AZ, and it's been crazy with teaching and my day job. And on top of that, I've been working on making some pretty big personal decisions in my life.
Needless to say, it's been cra-cra.
Although I've managed to get some work done, my progress toward my writing goals took a serious back seat, which I'm not happy about, but I recognize is part of juggling 2 very different careers.
With that, let's look at how I did these past 2 weeks:
Goal: Write extra scene recommended by Beta 2
Result: Done! The extra scene ended up being multiple extra scenes, adding approximately 8,000 words to Draft 7. And following that, I had to go through the rest of the book to make sure that the conversations made sense given the extra material. I completed this chunk this morning.
Goal: Feedback with Beta 1
Result: Unfortunately, it didn't happen. Beta 1 was running behind with life, and so we canceled our session and plan on meeting next week.
Goal: Develop Q4 Writing Goals
Result: Nope... I started working on my Q4 writing goals, but I got so overwhelmed with everything else going on, I had to put all this on hold.
The Plan: In truth, I need a reset. I have some serious Career ADD (not a real thing), and find myself becoming distracted with the millions of projects I want to tackle. Essentially, instead of "plot bunnies," I've got "career bunnies" running around in my head, and it is insanely annoying.
I had to take some time this week to remind myself of my true life goals and get organized on what I really want for my future. It took some reflection to remind myself that writing is, and always will be, my deepest passion. So I had to recommit to that.
With that said, I recognize that there are a lot of spinning plates in my life right now, and if I really want to grow my author career, I need take out some of those spinning plates. So, I made some decisions, and decided to drop my teaching job at my local university. I'm going to be finishing up this semester, which ends next week, but then I'll no longer be teaching.
With teaching off my plate, my hope to free up more time to write, meet the needs of my kids, still kick-ass in my day job, and have some time for myself too.
It's still a lot to juggle and manage, especially with a new responsibility looming around the corner. (I'm keeping that piece a secret for now until I know more of how that's going to turn out.) But I'm hoping that giving up my teaching job will give me back some emotional bandwidth.
So, with that said, I want to keep things simple for myself this week as I finish up teaching and grading.
Goal 1: I want to have my final feedback session with with Beta 1.
Goal 2: Beta 2 also says she's ready to have that final feedback session next week, so I want to get that done too.
Stretch Goal: I don't think this is going to happen, but if I have the time, I'd like to iron out my writing goals for Q4, which is already in full swing.
That's all for today! Have a great week and don't forget to keep turning the page!