Word Count and Professional Envy

It's been a productive week, thank heavens.

Saturday was the NaNo write-in. There were around 16 writers attending, with about ten staying the entire time from 10 am to 7 pm. We took an hour off for lunch, a ten minute break every hour, and did 8 solid sessions. And the grand total of all words written...drumroll...was 81.000+!!!!

I got in just over 8,000 myself, all on the sequel to my YA that I plan to finish up in January. With Christmas and the end of the year sliding closer, I have to be a little realistic about what I'm going to be able to get finished in 2013. (6 1/2 weeks left, btw)

I did get the western romance proofread and polished. I also had a friend teach me how to do my own formatting so when errors are brought to my attention, I can go in and fix them myself. YAY! And this is no light accomplishment; I'm not technically gifted and I really doubted I could wrap my old wrinkly mind around it. BUT I DID!

So the book went up yesterday. And just like every other time I've put a book up, 24 hours later, I'm antsy to get the next one out. What can I say. I find relaxing a waste of good writing time. So tomorrow, I'll be working on Kiss This again. I'm going to expand it a little. But I've got some advertising coming up on Christmas Kiss, so I basically have ten days to get this up. I've got a reverse timeline figured out so I can stay on schedule. I LOVE reverse timelines. I have no idea why. Maybe it's a residual thing from running a flower shop and having a hundred steps necessary to pull off wedding productions.

Anyway.
Here's what's new from discussions with Supe.
We are working on professional envy, or rather, resisting it. And the best way to resist it is to stop watching what other writers are doing, what they're accomplishing, and thinking about what we can do to be equally successful. We realize it's something we've spent way too much time on, and it has left us feeling like failures. Which we're not.

For my part, I've just published my tenth book. The third this year. And I've got at least three coming out before the end of the year. Not a bad year.

We're coming into the home stretch. What can you--reasonably--get done before 2014.