It's not that I'm not writing...

... it's that I'm not writing for you. You may have noticed the pace of my blog entries has slowed down quite a bit in recent months. I started this blog in June 2008, back when I was focusing on my fiction and only taking the occasional freelance job. Then TSU and I looked at the bank accounts, looked at number on Boy's varsity jacket ('12), and decided I needed to step it up. In 2009 my invoices totalled nearly three times my total from 2008; it looks like 2010 will be another 35% more than 2009. I've been a busy freelancer, finally feeling like the popular girl everybody loves.

Sadly, my fiction has been taking a back seat. And I was okay with that for a while; one of my manuscripts was getting good feedback—almost-but-not-quite positive responses from editors and agents—and I was content to let it sit there with a "maybe." I did manage to barf out a first draft of a novel during NaNoWriMo last year, as well as three "chapters" of a middle grade novel (since abandoned ... for now), but I wasn't as regular as I had been.

I've decided that has to change. After attending a couple of conferences with really helpful workshops, I'm ready to get out there again. Novel #1 needs a little tweaking to the plot and it already has an editor who's a good candidate for submission (she used the plot summary as an example of "what works" in a workshop). Novel #2 needs more character development; I've been brainstorming some things, and will be making notes in a journal so I can go back and do some heavy revising at some time in the future. Novel #3, which came out of the NaNoWriMo, is undergoing major revisions, but I'm having fun playing with the structure and exploring the characters. Fitting those projects in among my paying jobs, my teaching, and my volunteer work is proving pretty challenging, but I'm going to manage it. One of the ways I'll manage is by making the blog take a back seat. I'll keep posting my weekly photos, but you'll be lucky if you get more than one extra entry per week. I'm running out of craft projects to share and I don't have time to bake more cookies, let alone room in my diet! I know my legions dozens handful of readers will be disappointed relieved, but you gotta write what you're passionate about ... and since I woke up before my alarm today thinking about revisions, not blog entries, that's where I'm going to be writing most days.

Photo of the Week--10/11/10

Although we've traveled to various places around the world, some of the loveliest scenery is found right in our Michigan backyard. We took a trip up to the northern lower peninsula last summer, and this photo of Lake Michigan was taken not far from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. If my hair looks a little bedraggled in this photo, it's because earlier that day we climbed the dunes and walked all the way—3.5 miles round trip through the sand—to the lakeshore and back. It was worth it for views similar to this one!