What a week it has been.  I have been dog-sitting since Tuesday which has taken a huge chunk of my time.  I have cats and the cats tend not to be as needy but just for starters dogs have to go outside to pee!  My term comes to an end tomorrow and the one thing I will miss is the walking.  If nothing else, she has definitely forced me to get off my butt!

Naturally it’s always a trade-off.  If I look after the dog it means I’m not getting to my writing.  Or I spend time with my writing and she sits in the chair over there pouting as she watches the front door.  Dogs don’t understand about tomorrow so it’s hard to explain to her that it’s one more sleep and mommy and daddy will be home.

So I have been working on writing in stolen moments. Here’s one my unsuccessful stolen moments… the kitten thought he was being helpful…

Don’t tell anyone (okay, one person knows), but I was spending some time on it on Thursday… especially on Facebook.  It’s difficult to explain… when my mind flicks the switch to ON it almost ends up on a rutted track in that focus on other things is nearly impossible.  There are just times and moments when my attention ends up on writing.  Sometimes it’s simply because I haven’t had the time or made the time to focus on writing and my brain just needs to get that out there!  Other times I get so frustrated with my job that I feel the need to hop on to my writing Facebook pages and just connect with other writers.

On Friday I actually wrote myself a to-do list.  I had to.  There were way too many things I need to do including applying to a couple of jobs, getting my penciled edits into my hysterectomy manuscript, work on some letters to publishers and focus on getting back to my fiction writing.

The Hysterectomy book is now finished from my perspective.  I have taken three passes at it and added and added.  I have made grammar and spelling corrections and it has come in at 25,000 words.  With some of the posts going up on The Street Team Book Marketing Group on Facebook I keep wondering if I even should try to seek a traditional publisher.  The biggest challenge is self-publishing and then there is no hope to traditionally publish because it’s now been out there according to a lot of publishers.

I think many of us do the self-publish route because it’s simpler.  It really is less time consuming to write, edit and then format and upload.  The biggest challenge is always getting people to buy it and I believe that’s where most of us get hung up.  How do we get there?  How do we get the reach we need?  How do we get people to actually buy our books versus wanting them for free?

Just a reminder to all of you, I have created the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1668959470098290/) where we can share and promote our own work whenever we want to.  Now we need to get the page to grow!  Readers invited as well because when we get going there will be some great material to choose from!

Better get back to work.  If I decide to submit to some traditional publishers I have letters to write and perfect!