Happy New Year!

A belated Happy New Year to you all.  With 2012 in its second day, I'm announcing my January Goals:  to have my Southern e-cookbook live by month-end and my second e-novel, "Good Ole Boys:  The Prequel" uploaded to both Amazon and B&N.  The cookbook draft keeps compounding like daily interest.  I'm gonna get it organized and just limit the page count and what's left over will become Volume Two.

As for my prequel e-novel, it needs a Final Edit and I just couldn't go through another one so near to the last one.  Plus, having three e-books to clean up in tandem with my freelance jobs among the chores along with that thing called "life," was probably too much to accomplish in any December.

So here we are.

A fresh month to attack our goals for this one-twelfth of a year.

I prefer to look at one habit, one (or more) deadline(s), within a thirty-day period as versus over a whole year.  You can lose momentum with a 365-day stretch.  Also your focus.  For me, I find it easier to locate those two, three items to fixate on.

And my day is pretty structured in order to accomplish all I have to do.  Mornings entail some household chores, checking my email--personal as well as business--and what social media I engage in, some writing-related reading, checking sales data, writing blog posts.  Around lunchtime, whether before or after, I work on any copyediting projects I have on hand.  Sometimes until 1:00 a.m., sometimes just until dinner.  Then I break for some "me" time, to watch a movie, to read a book for fun, before going to sleep.

So, mornings are chores, afternoons/evenings are for freelancing work, then downtime before bed.

Writing time is whenever the muse hits.  It can be as simple as a thought that I need to record and, what do you know?  I'm writing nonstop with a brilliant idea that came out of nowhere.  I look up, check the clock, find it is two hours later and I'm still midthought.  So I continue on.  I am assured if I follow my gut, knowing that my heart is in the right place, it will work out just fine.  I need to capture those thoughts before they flee.  And I find, once I do the "me" stuff, the actions tied to my own writing, that I'm so much more focused on the copyediting and the continual learning of my craft. 

I do something really important to me first, then the time spent elsewhere is not interrupted with distractions.

I have no cable, thus watch a selected handful of shows via Netflix or Hulu, with my movie addiction handled the same way.  No more spending precious hours watching TV in search mode "for something good." Works for me.  I get so much more accomplished now.

Let me back up to add:  First thing before I get out of bed (and last thing at night), I ask both my conscious and my subconscious, What should I work on today/tomorrow?  If no answers come right away, I shelve the question, knowing I will get a message, an inkling, soon enough.  If not, I keep to my routine as outlined above.

The answers can deal with spring cleaning as well as my own book drafts.  So watch for the answers, no matter how off-target they may seem.  Your path is found through that task.  Follow it.

So, what's on your agenda for 2012?