Not a New Year's Resolution

Many people make resolutions at the beginning of each year. Setting goals is a good thing (“spoken” by a list-checker), but why wait until the first day of a new year? I set goals all year, no matter what the date. On the top of my list for a while now has been to polish my manuscript, A Special Project (working title), find an agent and get that manuscript published. I’ve been challenged for over a year now to stay focused on that goal, but still managed to keep it in the crosshairs. The challenges? I’ve dealt with a nightmare government move to a new state and a new job, where I had to find and adjust to new everything. On top of that came the loss of my first grandbaby, which made all the rest seem like nothing.

On my first day in my new home in Moore, Oklahoma, after living in a hotel for a few weeks, the movers unloading my life into this new house couldn’t finish fast enough. A storm boiled on the horizon and they didn’t want to be anywhere near that city when it hit. I thought they acted a bit silly, it was only a storm, with some hail, maybe. But, I’d barely gotten the garage door closed when my daughter, who’d been there to help manage movers and box count, received a call from her husband saying a tornado had been confirmed to be on the ground in Moore. Everything I owned, my weather radio, my flashlights, everything, lay trapped in boxes somewhere in that house.

But, no problem, at least I had a shelter. Well, maybe one problem. I couldn’t figure out how to get the darn thing open. So, as the storm raged outside and the lights flashed on and off inside, my daughter, my two dogs and I huddle in the bathtub. Luckily, the tornado missed my new home by about a mile and no damage occurred—that would come from a tornadic storm in another couple months. That’s how my new life in Oklahoma began. And so it went.

As you can see, there have been challenges. Some greater than others, like the loss of little Lawson, but the goals remained: polish my manuscript, find an agent, get said manuscript published. After a re-write that started before I left Ohio and a couple rounds of critiques, the querying has begun. The timing just so happened to fall at the beginning of a new year, but querying has been on my radar for a while, just like the other goals mentioned. So, look out 2016, the culmination of these goals has been waiting for you!

Happy Writing!