Last Saturday, this is what we woke up to. Beautiful way to head into the month of December don’t you think? (Nevermind that today, in the actual month of December, it was in the high 60s and the snow has all melted.) Snowy days are great for bundling up in sweats and slippers, holing up in my office with a steaming hot mocha, and writing writing writing. I’d like to say that’s how I spent this last snowy Saturday, but it’s not. My brother and family were still visiting in the morning and after we saw them off, there was laundry, vacuuming up the feathers from decorating the dog, a general straightening of the house, and I finished reading my friend’s novel in progress for our writer’s meeting on Sunday.

Ace, proud of his feathers
I can’t believe the end of the year is swiftly approaching. Only one more month to check things off my yearly Want-To-Do list. I’ve accepted that many of those things aren’t going to happen this year. (Paint the kitchen cabinets? Not going to happen. Finish the basement? No way. Go to an outdoor movie in Boulder or at Red Rocks? Missed out on that for the year.) Onto the 2009 list they will go. But there is one thing I really hope I can accomplish by the year’s end—finish the revisions on my novel. Over on Cuppa Jolie, a new blog I recently found (via Laini Taylor’s Grow Wings blog), she was talking about setting goals for December in order to stay productive through all the holiday hubbub. I volunteered my goal of finishing my revisions and I have to say it felt good to vocalize it. Throw it out there into the ether as it may be. If anyone in either of my writing groups is reading this, they will be rolling their eyes right about now because I’ve vocalized my goal of finishing my revisions to them for quite awhile now. So stating it in a different format to a different audience isn’t really what’s going to make the difference. I know that. It’s up to me and only me. Prioritizing writing time over other things (like laundry and vacuuming up feathers from decorating the dog), stocking up on bum glue to aid in keeping that butt in chair, and banging on the keys until the revisions are finished. That’s easier said than practiced though, but I’m working on it, and for some reason vocalizing it to old writing friends and new ones too helps keeps me focused on the goal and not tempted by the myriad of distractions that are out there.