It’s been more than a week since I last blogged, and I hope you don’t take that as a sign of my stopping. Because I am writing on my novel, just not on the blog. Yet I don’t want to leave anyone hanging. I did not win the Tethered Letters Contest I entered. Boo. I did, however, receive a lovely email from them which told me they liked my piece and want me to submit it to their revision service to help get it into shape to possibly publish with their magazine. Not an outright win, not an outright loss. I believe I will take advantage of this complimentary offer because, why not? Feedback from a panel of professional publishers (for free) is always welcome. It’s a much needed boost for my confidence. I’m still looking for my one publication of 2015. I got started a few months late, but I think I can still reach this goal with hard work. It’s just difficult to balance working on short stories for publication and working on writing my novel (which I am currently loving). There’s only so much time for a lady that works 40 hours a week, has a commute time of 8 hours a week, and loves her family more than all the world. I’m going to take a hard look to see how to stream line my life to leave more time for pure writing time to get the novel done already. I’m a long way from the goal, and it’s not moving along as swiftly as I’d like. Yet if I put too much pressure on myself, writing dries up altogether, and I spend a lot of time staring at the last sentence I was able to write not believing I can write another paragraph, sentence, word, letter! It’s all about balance, and I’m still trying to figure that out. I want to be motivated and energetic, not pressured and scared. Either way, I’m going to keep writing because I must.