Ever have one of those times when you look up and suddenly a whole season has passed? I last wrote here at the very start of the summer (late spring, really). And today is the first day of October.
I’ve been busy. That’s no excuse – everyone is busy, particularly authors and the self-employed. A lot has happened, though, in the interim. My 18-year-old daughter has just moved across the country with her boyfriend and his family. I miss her so much! She and her boyfriend were living with us for the summer, before they moved. Our elderly dog passed away. I’ve started (another) business. You know, the big-transitions-in-many-areas-of-life sort of busy.
But now I’m ready to return to ROW80 and inspired to ramp up my career as a writer even further.
If you’ve read my updates before, you probably know that I have a business, with my partner BlackLion, called Feline Dreamers. Well, now I have an additional business as a book midwife. And my work as an author of fiction is just getting started. So there’s a lot to do. Lucky for me that most of it is super fun.
I guess I’ll start with reviewing my progress on my goals from Round 2, which is where we were when I left off reporting my results here.
2017 ROW 80 Round 2 Goals
Promote and sell Heart of the Goddess book. Get the book on Ingram (so bookstores and libraries can order it). Once that’s done, revise my promotion plan. Get more reviews. Do the 100 Review Book Launch course that I already purchased. Look into hiring an agent or virtual assistant to help with ongoing book promotion. I’ve discovered that reaching out to bookstores and promoting myself and my books in person, one shop at a time, just isn’t my thing. So I haven’t made much progress in this regard. But I’m going to renew my search for an agent and/or virtual assistant, so it will still get done.
Revise Patterns in the Void and prepare it for publication. Collect all beta reader feedback in one document. Make a revision plan, then implement it. After the revisions are complete, do a proof-reading edit. (Target publication date is July 2017). I have all the reader feedback, and was working diligently on the revisions until May. I took the summer off, and revised my target publication date to November 2017. However, after taking Writer’s Bootcamp this past week, I’ve made a strategic decision not to publish it just yet. More on that in a future post.
Continue my craft, finance, & business learning. Participate in In Arms Coaching program. Read at least 3 books about writing craft and/or making a living as a writer. Participate in Personal Finance Consciousness Circle (PFCC). Finish reading and working through the Barbara Stanny finance book. I have been rockin’ the learning! I’ve been in the biz coaching program consistently, and have done lots of learning on my own as well. I’m in the process of implementing much of it.
Build community for Feline Dreamers. Create and promote podcasts and online workshops. Get 3 new speaking/teaching engagements in front of existing audiences. Done, and ongoing.
Focus on blogging. Post to my Starcat’s Corner blog at least once every other week, Feline Dreamers each month, and on this blog twice per week. Write, edit, and submit monthly guest blog posts for Kind Over Matter. Submit a guest blog proposal to Mike Dooley’s site. Keep a running list of blog post ideas, drafts, and picture ideas. I haven’t been blogging as much as I usually do, on my own pages at least. However, I did submit a post to Mike Dooley’s site, finally, and it was accepted and published! That’s a win.
Spring Hometending. Clear off and de-clutter my desk and filing cabinets. Finish painting the stairwell and put up photos. Work on de-cluttering the basement. Um. Nope. Didn’t happen. Well, there has been a little bit of basement de-cluttering. But there is much still to do.
Enhance my physical health. Devote time to daily exercise, including but not limited to walking, yoga, dancing, hula-hooping, and swimming. Stop eating sugar. Eat less in general. I’ve been doing super great with the regular exercise, all summer. Yay! I’m still eating sugar at the moment. That’s the next thing to work on, I guess.
Live my LUMINOUS spiritual daily life. Do things I love: write in my journal, read, do yoga, dance, walk, spend time with loved ones, and express my gratitude. Pay attention to my dreams and keep records of them. Set intentions before sleep and upon waking. Meditate and do my chakra clearing daily. Gather with my sisters on Full Moons. This has been going well for me. The only tweaks I would make are to actually do the intention setting before sleep, and to get back to my yoga practice.
I almost forgot – because I’m not publishing a book this year, I have the time and energy to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. So excited! I missed it last year. I’m so much looking forward to it – and to re-joining the ROW80 world, too. Next up: my goals for Round 4.
So, I jumped back into ROW 80 after an absence of a few months, and then promptly neglected to do updates. It’s not that I haven’t been making progress. I totally have (even though I’ve also put in some relaxing time in the hammock with my feline friend).
So, I’ve been away from ROW 80 (and from updating this blog) for a few months. I pretty much skipped Round 3, but I’ve not been completely idle. You can see some of what I’ve been up to this summer 
