ROW80 check-in #5

Posted on January 29, 2012 by S.J. Maylee

Oh it has been a rough week. The pattern that I put in place during the first three weeks of the year fell apart on me this week.

My only goal for this round of ROW80 was to spend an hour a day with my characters. Well my only goal that I have written as a part of ROW80. Two other personal goals have been in full swing for a long time now.

Since last July I have been on a weight loss journey. I’ve lost over 30 pounds and I’ve taken my BMI from just over obese to just into the normal weight category. I’ve been blogging about this journey at SimplySidney. I have 4.2 more pounds to lose before hitting my goal weight. Totally doable, right?

In my evil day job I am a self-employed certified project manager. I have just a few clients (I’m also a mom of two little ones) and I’ve known for sometime that I will be losing a client later this year, since they have sold their company. I’ve been working on getting a new client and I finally have one, yeah. Unfortunately this client will be paying much less and hour, bummer, although they are providing me with a lot more work. Yeah for the finances…total bummer for the writing time.

Mix in some personal and family issues and you get my rough week. A week that made finding time to write impossible and it even worked against me in my weight loss journey.

I met my ROW80 goal one day this week, well I guess one day is better than nothing.

For my weight loss journey I need to pull on my “can do” attitude from the last 30-weeks. For writing I’m going to take what I have learned in the previous three weeks and try to find a new way. The only way to go is to push my story forward. No wandering around, just push forward.

Here’s to a week that is better than this past week!

Links of the week #2

Posted on January 21, 2012 by S.J. Maylee

Lots of good stuff this week!!

Roni Loren had a guest on her blog earlier this week, Suzanne Johnson is an urban fantasy author. She wrote a fascinating post about her writing process: My Writing Process: Draft Zero to Done

Over at A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing I came across a very interesting take on the benefits of self-publishing over traditional publishing. This post is not just for the newbie: Self-Pubbed Author Beware

at Jenny Hansen’s Blog on Thursday she had a guest post from Maggie Lawson entitled Put Your Reader in Your POV Character’s Skin

Ed Bott had a post this week entitled Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement, after reading this post I’m pretty sure I wont ever think about putting one of my books (if I ever finish one) on ibooks, well thanks do change, right 🙂

Over at Publisher’s Weekly, Karen Springen posted Should Authors and Agents Weigh In on Citizen Reviews?

The Lawson ladies are really something special, I hope one day to be able to take one of their courses!! Until then I thoroughly enjoy their posts!! Tiffany Lawson Inman posted at my fav Writers In The Storm Blog this week. I’m going to be re-reading this post for a while. Writing Naked Will Take You To The Top!

Links of the week #1

Posted on January 14, 2012 by S.J. Maylee

All week long I come across interesting reads on the web, in fact my day often gets derailed by some of the great stuff out there. I’m hoping this will be the first in a series of posts with links that I found helpful & hopefully you will find them helpful too. Although a good portion of links I go after are related to writing you will find other types of stuff here as well. My test: I found it interesting, thought-provoking, or I learned something and I will be sure to link it here.

Here I go, here are my links for this week:

Stacia Kane, an author of Urban Fantasy posted very honestly about the relationship between readers, reviewers, bloggers and authors. I’ve been reading about the troubles lately in the fine balance and this post really got me thinking: Something in the water?

Roni Loren, a romance author, had a very interesting post in her blog tour 5 Ways Writing Erotic Romance Differs From Writing Other Genres. I found this posting interesting not just because my family and friends do not know what genre I have been writing in, but because no mater your genre the writing needs to be well done and compelling. Nothing can bomb a book faster than poor plots and structure, erotic romance is no different. What assumptions have you made about Erotic Romance authors or authors of other genres?

Meljean Brook, author of Paranormal & Steampunk Romance had me rolling in laughs with this post: Diary of an Author, Day 5 – 365

Lots of good stuff over at Writers in the Storm, including this post (perfect timing since I can be found editing most days): Kiss Your “As” Goodbye! by Margie Lawson, she explains the good and bad of the word “as”

Ingrid Schaffenburg had the most thought-provoking post of the week, I’ll be thinking about this one for some time to come!! In her Post Dream Catchers she ponders the difference between doing what you love & doing what you love to learn. Seriously good stuff!!

Did you find anything interesting or helpful in the links above? Please let me know!!