Goal

I have set a major goal for myself. It will require me spending less time online for the next 2 weeks. A less strict version of No Internet Distractions Week, if you will.

My goal?

Finish this round of edits through the end of the novel and finish combining chs. 1&2, which will hopefully put me in the position of being ready to send out to betas.

There. I've publicly declared it. Scary, scary, because if I didn't share at least then no one would have known if I fail. But I won't fail, right?

Right.

Because it's all up to me.

Outlining, guest-posting, and more!

Well hello, blogosphere.

I'm baaaaaaack!

And I had a great week.

I lunched at Panera (my absolute favorite). Went shopping. Watched ROMEO + JULIET. Read HARRY POTTER. Painted my bathroom a light gray.

And got a TON of focused editing done (more about that below).

My No Internet Distractions Week experiment taught me a few things:

1. I didn't miss Twitter. I don't plan on being as active on Twitter as I was before - I get too much done without it.
2. I missed Facebook, but I may have cured my addiction. I usually log in several times a day (with several meaning... oh, I dunno... 20?), but since Friday evening I have logged in twice a day (morning/evening). I was gone for 5 days and nothing really happened on there. No need to log in all the time, right?
3. I missed Blogger (and reading everyone else's blogs) the most, but I also realized that blogging, while helpful, is a huge time-drain, too. When I first started blogging, it was my goal to post twice a week; lately I've been blogging 4 days a week. My new official policy is 2 posts a week, unless I have the time/feel like blogging more.
4. Without Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger, there's not a whole lot to do on the internet. The stories on MSN and Yahoo! News don't change much during the day. Dear Abby and Annie's Mailbox only come out once a day. I'm proud I didn't succumb to my old TMZ addiction, nor did I resort to playing Pop It! on Pogo.

I want to thank Choco for cross-posting my review of LIFE, AFTER over at in which a girl reads last week. The timing wasn't great, since anyone who clicked on my name from the guest post saw I wasn't blogging all week, but the opportunity surfaced right before I went dark and I didn't think about the fact I wouldn't be around. Lesson learned, right?

Speaking of guest posts, the first 2 weeks of May my brother will be home on block leave before he deploys to Afghanistan, so I will be less active online during that time and am looking for 2-4 people to write guest posts for then. If you are interested, shoot me an email with ideas (or the link to a post you've already written but feel would be a good cross-post/adaptation) and we'll talk.

AND FINALLY.

The fruit of last week's work (part of it, anyway):

An actual outline! Made by me! The person who hates outlining!

I'll blog more about this later. It was hard work, but incredibly helpful.  If you're interested in the method behind this kind of outline, as well as detailed instructions on how to create the storyboard, check out Keli Gwyn's post.

No Internet Distractions Week

Starting Sunday at midnight EST, I will be participating in a No Internet Distractions Week. I won't be logging into Blogger, Twitter, or Facebook from Monday, April 12 to Friday, April 16. So no blog posts next week.

I think the hardest part will be Facebook, since that's where I connect with my real-life friends.

If you see me on Twitter after Sunday, yell at me (in ALL CAPS).

I hope by doing this I might put the pedal to the metal on my editing process, which has suffered lately due to various mild-but-annoying illnesses and stress.

Hope everyone has a wonderful spring weekend and a productive week.

See y'all after the 16th!