Keeping busy chasing the dream

Dreams are what keep us alive. Once you stop dreaming–once you no longer have anything to shoot for–you stop living.

Anyone reading this blog knows that my goal (my “dream”, if you will) is to make it as a professional writer.

Anyhow, in a recent post I talked about my writing goals for the rest of the year, but tonight I want to talk about a few of the other things I’m planning to do to help get to where I want to be.

I should also take a break to mention that my wife destroyed every copy I have of my novel this weekend.

No, she’s not the least bit crazy. She did it to help me out. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it here, but the print version of Holy Fudgesicles had a problem with the resolution of the cover art. I’m not pointing blame at anyone or anything like that, and the problem has been resolved, but I am bringing it up because I felt it was a big enough problem to cause me to putt off promoting the novel at local events, including OSFest8 where I participated in several writing panels.

What does that have to do with anything? Well, now we tore off the covers sent them back to the publisher, I’ll be receiving my new batch of contributors copies in the mail. That means I can start properly promoting the novel.

Beside plugging my book wherever I can, I’ve got a few other plans to advance my writing career.

The 2015 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference takes place in September. I attended last year and it was truly a life-changing event. Only good things will come out of returning to it this year, even if I don’t have a novel ready to query.

The Nebraska Writers Guild Fall Conference takes place in October. I’m planning on attending that as well, as it’s always important to meet other local writers and make new connections. They’ve also got a few pitch sessions with agents accepting queries. Maybe I’ll have something ready by then (crossing fingers.)

I’m also planning to volunteer a few hours to sit at the the NWG table at the 2015 NLA/NSLA Joint Conference this year. Hey, any opportunity to hand out business cards is worth taking, right?

Finally, I haven’t forgotten the super-duper-secret project in the works for this site, either. If all goes as planned, I’ll have more details on that in the coming months.

So, that’s how I’ll be keeping busy. But every baby-step counts.

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