Looking Forward

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly due to the chaos of finals and saying goodbye to many friends as they return to their hometowns for the summer. As for me, I've gotten too attached to Reno and will be staying put. I'm looking forward to getting a lot of writing done, hopefully on the beach with a cocktail in my free hand.

The conference helped me determine my goals going forward, and to help with accountability ( which we all know I have a problem maintaining on my own), I'll outline those here.

First, I'd like to get the article I wrote about my first experience wine tasting picked up by a magazine, and possibly adapt it to send in to other magazines. This seems like a logical first step to me because the piece is short and already complete, it just needs to be revised and polished. I also think it's something that I can offer a fresh perspective on that would be intriguing to readers of wine mags. Being able to say that I've been published and count myself as a professional writer in that way is a big step, and I think this is the best way to take it. 

Second, I plan to work on my brand. Phillippa Burgess gave me a lot of great tips at the conference about how to go about doing this, and I want to take the time to do it right (which will hopefully boost my readership here and on my blog).

Speaking of this website, my third goal for the summer is to get it polished. I want to hand someone a business card that matches the site, have them open it up and think "wow." I may decide to move the blog over here completely, but for now I want to keep it going, so that I don't have a similar problem to the last time (when I renamed the blog and presumably left previous readers with no way to find the new one.....).

Fourth, I'm aiming to organize the two 2-inch binders full of notes on my main project into something more manageable. With the new outlook Larry Brooks helped me work out, I want to start work on it with a plan.

Fifth, I'll be polishing the short stories I've written the last few years and the pieces that I've published on this blog, so you'll be seeing some new things and some old things with a facelift. 

Sixth, I'm going to start work on a story related to my main project. You'll be seeing snippets of that here, as well. I'll post a premise once I've gotten a little further into the piece!

Finally, I'll be working on my craft through reading, wrapping up James Patterson's MasterClass, and hopefully attending a writing retreat in Tahoe this August.

It will be a couple weeks before you see these things here or on my website, as I'll be out of town for a week, but I'm really excited about what I'm working on and confident in the plans I've laid out. Here's to a great summer!