The Un-blog Post

Perhaps 'tis the season to be jolly, but I have to confess, I'm in a funk.

Short of congratulating the five amazing finalists in the Dorchester Next Best Celler contest(two of whom are DIVAS!!!!), I have no blog topic today. So, I'm going to do what hard pressed women have been doing since the dawn of time. I'm going to fake it until I make it. ;)

The holidays are upon us, and I don't know about you, but the more I throw myself into celebrating, the lower my daily wordcount falls. I think my high school math teacher referred to this concept as an "inverse correlation." Or not, considering I probably skipped that day, which means my notes were borrowed from the studly but not so intellectually endowed second-string quarterback. Translation? God only knows how accurate that term really is.

But for the purpose of today's blog, it works. Holidays are play time. This holiday, moreso, as it may be the last one for a while when my entire family is together. So my word count is tanking hard and fast. That makes January payback time.

But this year, I can't afford to spend the month of January oiling my rusty hinges. In spite of my dropping out of the Next Best Celler contest to deal with some epic family struggles, I do still have a manuscript due to my (patient) publisher and a personal goal to get Muse Struck into Dorchester before they forget that they have ever so graciously invited me to send it in to them when it's done. ;)

Muse Struck was the manuscript that autism built, my fun way of pushing awareness into areas of readership that might not have been introduced to autism otherwise. The project simply can't die. Every hope I have for my sons' futures is tied up in that manuscript.

So, with that said, I'm falling to our writer readers to help me figure out how to move through a bittersweet holiday season with enough focus to keep the pages piling up, even if it's just a paragraph at a time.

So dear readers, have at it. How do you pile up the pages when the gun's aimed at your skull?

On an aside, did you ever wish you could say you knew a best seller way back when? Now you can. When you're done putting me on the straight and narrow, check out fellow textnovelist and Next Best Celler semi-finalist, Jennifer Hart's fun, fresh and sassy interview at Wild Child Publishing as she talkes about her new release, River Rats.