A goal, no matter how ridiculous, is still a worthy goal.

Good morning all!

I'm writing to you from the icy depths of my home office in my basement. We are mere weeks away from my home office moving to the heated level of the house, but for now I'm still in the dungeon. (Yes, I'm taking a rare vacation day from the Evil Bossman, and doing NOTHING.)

Hopefully you all had a good Christmas or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate at this time of the year. We have New Year's coming up, which is a time to spend with friends, as opposed to Christmas which is the forced march of doom to the bosom of your family. I am looking forward to spending New Year's with my very good friend and critique partner and her family this year.

But I digress.

I have a deadline my friends and I'm afraid I've bitten off way more than I can chew. Last year, many of you remember, I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel of the Year contest. I had some success, making it to the quarterfinals, or the top 500 out of 10, 000 manuscripts. Not too bad, right?

Well, I got notice again this year that the deadline for the 2010 contest is fast approaching. And I've decided to enter. But, I've also decided it's probably not a good idea to enter the same novel. (Even though for marketing purposes I have made a bunch of changes to said novel.) So, I've decided to take my notes from a story I've had in my head for about ten years and write a full novel in a month. The absolute deadline is February 7.

Yes, I have lost my ever lovin' mind.

It took me almost 30 years to write my first and Dream in Color, my second novel, took me six years, not counting the intense year of editing with Aly, my editor at Wild Rose Press. So what makes me think I can have a novel fully written and contest ready in a few weeks?

I have no idea.

But think of it as a new approach to a new year's resolution. This is about focus. Maybe I get the thing done, maybe not. But it's time to sit down and write something new and this might be the thing for it. I'm hoping to take a week off of work at some point in January and really get it going, but as any writer will tell you, it's not the time off from anything that produces a book. It's the focus.

I've done my best writing late at night when all others are in bed and the house is quiet. I've also done good work at work when I simply keep my flash drive open on my work computer and work when I'm not answering phone calls or emails.

My point is that while it's not likely to happen, I've set a goal for myself, and it's one that I really do want to achieve. And, in the end, maybe I don't have an entry for the contest. But I'll have a new novel to edit and market.

And, in the world of writers, isn't that a worthy goal?