My day job gives me Wednesdays off. Why? The first Wednesday of the month is the Big Important Meeting wherein I present a snapshot of our business operations and what's on our books. It's so vital that I have uninterrupted hours to balance spreadsheets for that month's activities, people leave me alone several days preceding because when I took over those books? I was one transposed number away from full-on drama queen meltdown.

Plus, I snarl a lot.

What everybody doesn't know is I got my accounting groove on a couple years ago and I can now wrap our books in a tidy bow in under three hours. As opposed to three days. I invest an hour each on Monday, Tuesday & yes, the dreaded Wednesday, to make the numbers balance and then I have the rest of my uninterrupted, non-drama queen day to myself.

Amazing how much writing I can clock in, on the sly, when the phone isn't ringing off the hook.

Writing, I've discovered, is kissing cousins with working the numbers. It isn't just words and exploring character and storyworld. It's counting words and setting goals. How much can you realistically do in a day? A week? Not just the glorious though rare uninterrupted days -- regular work days, too. Factoring in your day job (if you have one), rampaging children (if you have them) and friends who think an unscheduled hour is a sign from God that you were fated to do that one teeny tiny favor for them. (No! Pick up your own dry cleaning, you wretch.)

I'll invest my hour balancing the books for my day job this morning, then move on to revisions for WHAT ROUGH BEAST. If it goes well? I'll have the rough of the new prologue behind me and even if it doesn't, I'll be close to finishing. Don't write X number of words/day because you're inspired -- write X number of words/day because you're a professional. Write because, crunching your writer-ly numbers, you know what you can do. So deliver it.

My het paranormal, VAMPYR CHRONICLES: WHAT ROUGH BEAST, was accepted for publication by Loose Id today! After liking but ultimately passing on two other manuscripts, I'd begun to wonder if everyone at Loose Id was ready to give up on me, but ha! I finally -- FINALLY -- hit the mark. Or rather, I hit close enough to the mark to persuade them I can deliver the bulls-eye during edits.

Whoa.

Time to enter a new stage in my writing career.

I've read over the contract and thank God, I took a workshop on contracts at one point so I actually understood the thing. That and other paperwork should go out in tomorrow's mail. Even before I received the offer, I'd started work on the necessary revisions so that's already underway, too...

Yes, all right, I confess. I'm giddy. Ecstatic, really. When I realized my stories were best suited for epub & indie publishers, I researched. A lot. When I'd finished, Loose Id topped my A-list. Loose Id offers quality stories and a professional site that's easy to navigate. Reports from authors who write for Loose Id are stellar and some of those authors are favorite auto-buys for me. I submitted my first manuscript and though it was rejected (as well as the second), the editor I was assigned to at Loose Id offered suggestions that were genuinely helpful and encouraged me to send more. Excellent editor plus the publisher I wanted? Naturally, I'm thrilled. Who wouldn't be?

Floored, too, though. You betcha. After finishing seven books (the earliest of which, I subbed to NY which moves.......this......slooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooooooowly.....), I never imagined that when I found a publisher who wanted something of mine that it would happen quite so rapidly. Twelve days. Serious. Well, twelve days and oh, twenty-odd years?

Which leads right back to the being thrilled part.

I don't want to just sign the bloody contract.

I want to bronze it.

WOO HOO!

RWA National starts tomorrow. Well, if you have any kind of sense, you plan to arrive at least one day beforehand to avoid the hideously long lines at check-in and acclimate yourself to the layout of the convention center, but still. I could be on a plane right now. I should be.

I knew that if I accepted a new day job last fall, conference wasn't going to happen for me because I wouldn't have the vacation time. Worse, at the moment, there's absolutely no one who knows how to do what I do -- except me. So even if I had the vacation time? No.

I took the job, anyway.

I love what I do, don't get me wrong, but right now, I almost wish that I hadn't.

There's nothing like RWA Nationals for romance writers. Nothing. It's our Shangri-la. 2000+ women (and three men -- yes, boys, I counted), all of whom get it. No one gives you The Look when the topic of conversation turns to character arc, hooks, or who has which of your manuscripts & for how long. Sagging middles? Everybody understands that we aren't referring to flabby bellies. Entire days to invest in workshops. We agonize over editor/agent appointments, join the giddy crush at book signings and try very hard not to be too much of a fan girl to the poor published author who has the misfortune to (holy god) climb into our elevators. Nobody's eyes glaze over. We discuss which editor is looking for what, admire each other's shoes over adult beverages and go to parties where (holy god part 2), you get to hug the poor woman you didn't molest in the elevator.

How much I miss that right now surprises me given that I've had over half a year to get used to the idea that I wouldn't attend this year, but I do miss it. With every mention of conference preparations over the past week and head's up warnings from earlybirders like myself who are already at the convention center, I've been coveting that one-of-a-kind conference experience. Horribly.

Oh, I'll buy the conference CDs as soon as they become available. I can email, message or call any of the women I'm conference compadres with any time I like.

But it's not the same.

Next year, RWA National will be in New York. Which gives me approximately 365 days to find someone to fill in for me at the office because me? If I have to invest those 365 days in training a chimp to cover my desk, I'll be in New York. Showing off my new shoes. Er...I mean, shopping my books around, networking and improving my craft like crazy. No reason I can't do all that wearing fabulous shoes, though, right?

Literary whiplash.

Devo's giddy-bizarre 80s hit aside, what is this foul injury, might you ask, and what are the symptoms of catastrophic damage?

It's like being in love. If you've fallen? You know.

I write (in no particular order): academic non-fic, commercial non-fic shorts for the web, m/m contemporaries (long & short form), m/m fantasy, paranormal het (erotic & non-erotic), het long contemporaries and just to keep things interesting, a bit of humor. Oh, and this blog, of course.

This is on top of my day job -- which requires even more writing, albeit to a local, limited audience. If one counts my anonymous username for the web, I currently write under three names and when I break into the m/m market, I'll probably need to add a fourth to the list.

Many Faces of Eve, anyone?

There are quite a few advantages to being so diverse, though. I always -- always -- have several writerly irons in the fire, which is important for someone who enjoys stress as much as I do. In some areas (academic non-fic, commercial non-fic shorts, humor), I've met the goals I set for myself, which is encouraging when my attention shifts to those areas I'm still plugging away at. I don't have all my eggs in one basket, too, so if one market dries up, one or more of the others are still thriving.

But it does present difficult choices.

At the moment, I have a m/m short contemporary (my Book 8) that is in dire need of finishing. An academic paper lacks only one small section to be complete and although that one isn't under deadline, the sooner I get it done, the better. Things also look promising on the het paranormal front, but the book that I'm anxiously awaiting word about launches a series that I've already clocked around 20K words in. (I stopped at 20K only because writing too far into a series is pointless if the first book never sells. Love. This. Storyworld!) And since the commercial shorts pay regularly & well, it certainly wouldn't hurt my bottom line to knock a couple more of them together.

So...Which project do I tackle next? Priorities. Writing in diverse genres demands priorities sharpened to knifepoint. It also sometimes requires me to actively work in two or more genres concurrently. That can be a godsend. If I get stuck on one project, I simply swap it for another and when I return to the first project, I've magically un-stuck myself. (Awesome.) Shifting gears, however, can be jarring, especially between fic and non-fic. Unless I'm working on the previously mentioned paranormal storyworld's lexicon, footnotes in fiction? Not cool.

If you ever spot a source index in one of my books?

Literary whiplash.

Please ignore Devo & leave my Momma's back alone.

My husband regularly works earlies (translation: asscrack of dawn) on Fridays and I haul my bleary-eyed self out of bed with him. Why? Because I'm neurotic, that's why. Oh, and we also work opposing shifts so even when he's trying to talk to me at the asscrack of dawn and my reply is "I know you're speaking English, but I can't make out the words," that still counts as quality non-naked together time as far as I'm concerned. (Granted, my standards are low.)

I'd never admit this in my real world, but I actually enjoy my 5am Fridays. Since I work in an office setting where my normal music preferences (hard rock & metal) just ain't ever gonna wash, I reward myself for dragging my no-anglais-before-6am behind out of bed by surfing iTunes for 80s Top 40s that is office-appropriate. (Footloose, anyone?) The kids are still abed; the house is quiet. I don't have to be at work until 9:00 and I have entire chunks of lovely time to write -- on a work day, no less, and most notably, before said work day sucks all the intelligence out of my head.

Ah, heaven.

Unless, that is, you happen to be out of coffee. Which I am.

All right, that's a heinous lie. I do have coffee. Since life would be intolerable without it, I keep an emergency stash of coffee that family and friends give me for Christmas, birthdays, whatever. I've got hazelnut. I've got some sort of cinnamon-y blend. I've got basic black, decaf (blasphemy) and some weird kind of Italian roast. (Not that the coffee's Italian, which might be good -- I mean the packaging is printed in Italian, which is perhaps very bad.)

None of it, however, is the whole bean Columbian I zap in the grinder every morning. God help me, it's actually pre-ground. And it tastes weird.

I'm a coffee snob, I confess. I want what I want what I want. I finally reached the point in my life when I could afford to treat myself to the coffee I loved a couple years ago and when I can't have it? Disaster.

Several hours after 5am, I've zero fresh pages and English is still my second language.

Thus instigating my brand spanking new mission in life -- lobbying the IRS to allow the deduction for my coffee as a business expense. Think it'll wash? Me neither. But if I get audited, no good coffee for me, I won't grasp fundamental English when they read me my Miranda rights. I'll walk away from those charges. Fo sho.

Today, I'm playing with promotion.

Well, okay, first I headed to the state tax office where I invested an hour in abject grovelling (who knew you're required to submit a zero quartely report? not me!), but now that I've properly abased myself, I get to play with promo.

Although I've promoted my non-fiction under my real name, I confess myself perplexed at doing it all over again under a pen name for my fiction. Twitter? Sure! Facebook? You betcha. Blogging (here I am), website builders & hosting, goodreads.com and other review sites, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! There are so many options, it's easy for Almost There writers to get lost in the fun, but sadly, chatting up writerly buds doesn't count toward today's 1000 words, does it? (Hint: no.)

So which should you choose among the embarrassment of promo riches?

A blog is a must. What on earth do you write about? Until I sign a contract, this one will trace my journey toward The Call (or, as is the case in epub, The Email), what manuscript(s) I'm actively working, and what I learn along the way. Blogs update more often than websites so they appear higher in search engines and it's a good habit-builder for when your books are finally in a paying customer's grubby hands.

Did I say website? Yep, I did. As a published writer, you'll need one so why not get that ball rolling? Setting up your website now will save the hassle when the first book sells -- you won't need to start from scratch whilst panicking over your first set of edits, drafting a story blurb for your masterpiece and giddily dancing at your first cover. Thank God, I already have experience building & maintaining a site as a non-fiction writer, but even so, it's a chore. A simple About Me page sounds easy until you actually knuckle down to do it. Post a list of current works with your pitch or blurb for each, a contact page and a links page for organization you belong to. KISKIF -- Keep It Simple, Keep It Fun.

Do you have an independent email specifically for writing business? Get one. What about Facebook? Twitter? Please don't use personal accounts for business purposes. Readers want to know you're busily writing away, not harvesting artichokes on Farmville. Just sayin'.

How's your networking? Here is where I run afoul. I've been posting reviews on www.goodreads.com for a year and I'm a member of several writing groups/loops, too. That's on the positive side. Barring occasional workshops, I haven't participated in the groups/loops, though. Will that change today? I doubt it. Tomorrow's not looking so hot, either. I gutted my eighth book so rewriting the last half is Priority #1. Improving my mad people-friendly skilz is on my to-do list, but promotion implies one has a product to offer. Right now, those products are my 5th book, my 7th book and my unfinished 8th. Without the product, promotion is pointless so don't let it suck up your work hours. Set aside x amount of time for promo and stick to it.

Now on to today's 1000 words...and my iced mocha.