Busy is as busy does.

#ROW80 is A Round of Words in 80 Days. It’s a quarterly writing challenge where you define your personal goals and blog each week about your progress. It’s made to be flexible and allow for tweaking.

I feel like a whole month has passed in the last week! This isn’t abnormal for the way my life has been going lately. If you look for the word “busy” I’m pretty sure my picture is right there with it.

Lately I’ve been seeing the need to not only build writing time into my day, but also social time.

I knew when this year started I needed to learn balance. Last year I wrote tons, but didn’t get out a lot. At the beginning of this year the pendulum swing in the opposite direction and I did almost all social things for a few months. Now, I need to find and keep the balance.

This last week was all the Halloween festivities, which included a midnight viewing of Rocky Horror Picture Show and a Halloween party. Of course since these are all adult events they happen at ungodly late hours, which puts me into total sleep fugue for the next day. Ack! I wound up working on one project and not the other, then the other but not the first. It made me a little crazy.

But you know what?

Balance is about writing some days and not others. It’s about making time for family and friends, while making work happen. It’s not just all writing.

My goal this week is to take a big breath and let the stress and pressure of having to write every day go. It’s okay to miss a day here and there.

So where am I at with this #ROW80?

• Holiday Spice has a potential release day of November 12th. That’s awesome, even if it does put it really close to the Midnight Ink release. I’ll just have to hope that readers don’t mind two books out so close together.
• I’m still doing a partial edit and rewrite of the first half of Good Guys Wear Black #2. The book was at 12K when I started this revamp of the plot, and it’s almost at 25K now. This mean the book will be totally on track word-wise and I can finish out this month and head into November feeling confident I can wrap up the second half of the book.
• The Bayou Bound #2 book is just awesome. The book is under 40K, with a big chunk of the plot left still to go. I’ve lined up an editor for it and I have a real deadline and projected release month for the book. It’s a lot of pressure, but that’s okay.
• The Midnight Ink release is right around the corner. OMG!!!! I sent in the final files this weekend. Pretty relieved about that.
• I need to check on promo material for How Zombies stole Christmas soon. I need a blurb, excerpt or something!

Okay, eat some candy, enjoy yourselves and find some balance in your lives!