From One to the Next

I did indeed take some time away from any projects last week to appreciate and celebrate all that I’ve done and accomplished so far. It felt really good to sit back and revel in the quiet for a bit. (Also, in the game playing, cookie baking, and snowperson building. 😁) Then, I got back to work.

Usually when December hits, especially after an intense writing experience in November, I’ve tended to take a step back from any major writing. I purposefully don’t plan on doing much during December so I can both relax and play catch up. There’s usually a list of things I’ve ignored during the month of November that I want to get to in order to get my feet back under me. I make to sure to set aside December for that work before moving onto the next writing project. This year though, the manuscript I have on my calendar to begin revising during the first few months of 2022, MS:TS, pulled me right in. There are several reasons this happened I think, not the least of which is that I’ve wanted to get back to this manuscript because it’s the next one I want to start querying. I think the biggest reason is because the last book I finished a big revision on, MS:D, is already out there being queried. Actively being in the querying process is hugely motivating and it makes complete sense that the next manuscript I want to query would pull me in so quickly. So, though I had a clear calendar this month initially, I’ve let MS:TS draw me right in.

This week, when I wasn’t working on MS:TS, I was preparing to do the work of goal planning for 2022. That involved gathering supplies for my 2022 vision board and making some notes for my potential word (or words) for 2022 and overall goals. In order to decide my word for next year, I’m going to go back to a writing exercise I did a few years ago with my writing group. The exercise involved different writing prompts to help us discover a word to focus on and to help narrow down what goals were most important to us for the coming year. It was a really powerful exercise in that it forced me to not just write down a goal, but to pick it apart and find what the heart of that idea meant to me. When I could identify that, I could see all of the ways it was important to me, and all of the avenues I could explore to reach it. I’m excited to have found them again and have them ready to go for a writing night this week. Now that all of that prep work is done, this coming week will be all about the work of making the goals and finding my word for 2022.

In case you haven’t been told today, you are more than enough.

Happy Writing!