A Bright New Year

Cape Cod Weather Today: A bright grey overcast sky, hovering in the 20s still, although the weatherman promised it would rise up over freezing today...

The new year dawned clear and cold on Cape Cod. I took this photo yesterday, on our walk to the beach with the dogs. The wind whipped through the holes in the knees of my jeans, and the drifted snow snuck down into our boots to chill our toes. The dogs did not venture out into the ocean to chase the gulls floating near the shoreline. Even they knew better, for a change.

Does anyone make New Year's Resolutions anymore? We had friends over for New Year's Eve, and it didn't even come up. No one talked about making any... and yet I'm still wondering if there are things I want to Resolve to do in the new year. Like less procrastination. More actual writing time. These would be good resolutions, but not sure how to make it work. Maybe that's why resolutions don't last. You come up with the result you want, but not the strategy for producing it. I need to develop my Writing Strategy, the one where I can be most prolific and get the result I want. Being published, that is. I know I have one novel that will be published, but another manuscript recently came back to me like a prodigal child, rejected once again. And my middle grade fiction needs to be finished. I really wanted to finish that by the end of 2008, and yet it still sits on my hard drive, the conflict unresolved. The King's life was saved, but the hero still needs to vanquish the evil Prince. And forgive the mother who abandoned him. (oh the cliche of it all...)

So my immediate goal for 2009 is to finish the current rewrites on Unfolding the Shadows and return them to my editor by Monday, when she is back at her desk. My second goal is to finish the first draft of The Summer People by the end of January, and go through a polishing process before mailing out queries to agents. I want an agent to help guide this middle grade novel through the currently stormy and uncertain publishing waters. Besides that, I just want an agent. And after I get that manuscript out the door, I can go back to my prodigal child and revise it once again... perhaps with all the editing knowledge I'm gleaning through the current process with the other book, I'll be better suited to making Finding Blue ready for prime time.

These are my resolutions and I'm sticking to 'em.

Oh, and I need to eat less chocolate and do less yelling at my kids. We'll see how long that lasts.