I could improve at being consistent with these posts. One thing I am good at staying consistent with is writing! Even though I’m not 100% done with my next book, I plan to publish it by Christmas! I’ve done the writing. I’ve spent countless hours editing. I’m done with the formatting. And I just submitted a proof copy!

While I haven’t been marketing, writing blogs, or posting YouTube videos, I’ve been writing for hours a day, doing my best to perfect my next novel. Still, that naggy, negative voice has been with me all along.

• Is this book even good enough?
• I still have a lot of things to add to this book!
• I have so much to do. How can I even think about publishing by the end of the year?!

These thoughts have been accompanying my busy weeks lately and, unfortunately, have attempted to cloud my focus. 

Last week I had convinced myself that my book was still developing and I’d have to postpone my goal of publishing by the end of the year. This is after already pushing the publishing date out from Thanksgiving. I still have dozens of things to add or edit:

• I needed to put my book in Grammarly. 
• I still needed to format it. 
• I had yet to get feedback from beta readers.
• My cover still needed to be finished. 
• I still needed to get a proof copy! 

Did I quit and give up any hope of meeting my goal of publishing three books in 2022? I most certainly did not! I got to work! One important thing to note is that I didn’t finish all these tasks in one day. Instead, I took one or two at a time and worked on them daily.

I asked myself, even if I don’t meet my deadlines, do I stop writing and editing altogether? Though my book is a month past my date goal, it doesn’t mean I should stop writing and editing altogether. 

After just a week, I had many wins to celebrate, however. I secured two beta readers who flew through my book, and they loved it! My cover artist came up with a beautiful cover in less than two days! And I miraculously got through an edit of my book in just three days.

To help with this, I purchased the premium package of Grammarly. This online typing assistant helps with spelling, punctuation, and, to a certain degree, sentence structure. It has taken me fifteen-plus hours to put my book into this cloud-based assistant, but I’m pleased with the results. I’ve crisped up the frayed edges in the story, changed words, caught misspellings, and, yes, in my forties, I am finding out that I’m terrible with comma usage. I will never again put another book or blog post without running it through Grammarly first!

While I still have a long way to go before my next book is published, I’m excited to announce that it will be published before Christmas. I don’t have an exact date yet, but I’m sneakily hoping I’ll hit the publish button by December 15th!