Remember when we were young and impressionable...

...and had all sorts of ideas of how long it takes to do anything.

So, if any writers who haave been doing the work for longer than I have ever stumble across this page, I'm sure they'd get quite a laugh out of my timeline assumptions posted here. I always feel like I'm padding my dates so well when I offer a deadline, but the truth is I take such a zig-zag approach to my work that estimating timelines is like throwing rocks at the moon.

It's not really just that the work takes longer than I think (though, it often does, because I'm methodical and obsessive  - and honestly, slow). It's that I also have this problem where I want to do everything all of the time. I want to travel this year, and I want to have my garden again now that my back is in better shape (thank you, 8 months of physical therapy) and I want to run and climb rocks and spend all of my time with my ever-more-interesting soon-to-be-7-year-old. But I'm also a writer.

I know this now. I know this now more than ever because I recently dove back into the work of quality assurance for a part-time gig to add to my travel fund (because part of doing everything is figuring out how to pay for it), and the experience has done well to remind me I am 100% writer and there's no going back now that I've had a bite of that apple.

So, taking on part-time work, volunteering with the PTA, running and doing crazy workouts in my basement, freelancing for friends and feeding my artist-self - it all takes time.

Here are the things I have done:
1. Finished reading one book already this year (and book 2 will be done by the end of this week)
2. Got that tattoo I promised (she's beautiful - I have another session coming up in March that I'm chomping at the bit to get to)
3. Signed up for my first writers' conference
4. Continued to JukePop my work (with the exception of November, when life stuff got the best of me)
5. Gotten back into comic books
6. Started planning a 6-week long trip with my daughter for this Summer
7. Started mapping the historical fiction piece for the coming year's work
8. Promised myself that Valentine's Resolution will be submitted to a publisher this year (OR BUST!)

Next things to do:
1. Get business cards (Betty Chestnut: Girl Boss has a nice ring to it)
2. Make that money to do those things - also, stop part-time gig in April for travel season
3. Start cooking again, cripes there's too much takeout in my life
4. Start working with my local adult literacy program THIS YEAR (I completed training in October and I should be getting my assignment any day now!)
5. Redo my cover art/name/etc

I hesitate to even type this, because I just admitted to my awful timeline problems, and clearly I am not doing much to make that easier on myself, but I did some math and I have ~24 chapters left to post on JP (that means I've hit the halfway point after today). If I can post 4 chapters a week, I'll have a full book up there in 6 weeks. Not too shabby. Realistically that means it'll probably be 12 weeks and then I'll have to start the tedious work of final revisions and formatting for submission, but hey progress is progress.

Alright, now that I'm frantic about being so far behind I'll never catch up, I guess I'd better get that chapter posted for today.