I've never liked the idea of making New Year's resolutions. Like most people, my good intentions lose strength and focus after a few days, and then I just end up feeling guilty for failing to follow through. If I made any resolution at all in the last few years, it was "I will not make any resolutions!" But this year, coming off a two-month hiatus dedicated to mending broken bones, I felt a need to do something to shake my productivity back into gear.

At about the same time, I converted my Yahoo home page to their latest format and found that it had a prominent "To Do" block above the calendar.  It was always the first thing I saw when I turned on the computer. So I decided to give it a try.  I didn't list all the little appointments I had in my desk calendar.  There were too many of them and most of them were supremely unimportant.

Instead, I used it to list my major publishing goals for the year.  There were four of them. First came a campaign to reclaim the electronic rights for my first book, followed by a complete rewrite and re-format of A Scratch with the Rebels in preparation for publishing a second edition of the e-book. I set a due date of the end of February. 

Second was an effort to find out how to go about putting out an audio version of Beyond All Price.  Under that heading were a couple of bullet points about auditioning narrators, choosing the best one, and getting the cover redesigned to fit the square forma of an audio book. The deadline there was April.

Third was finishing the first draft of Damned Yankee.  I was feeling real pressure there, because I had left the story hanging when I went into the hospital on Halloween and had failed to look a it for the whole two months.  I had lost the momentum, and also the clear road map of where the story was going.  It just sat in a computer file, rather like a dead fish. I gave myself until June to finish that one.

And finally, just to round out the year, I projected starting to work on an audio version of The Road to Frogmore. 

Last night I looked at my "To Do" list and was shocked to see how far I had come.  A Scratch with the Rebels is finished -- claimed, recovered, rewritten, and reformatted -- and available on Kindle and all of the Smashwords channels. I have a narrator for Beyond All Price, and we are in the production phase.  My work is done until early March when she finishes the recording and sends it to me for checking.  And yesterday I sent my editor the completed manuscript for Damned Yankee.(YAY)

Does that suggest that keeping a list of goals really works?  Maybe so! But my list is looking pretty empty. It must be time to come up with some new ideas.

When I first retired from teaching back in 2004 (Has it really been 10 years already?), I resolved to avoid alarm clocks, calendars, warning bells, and deadlines.  I had lived my entire life in schools, responding to every event with a clear understanding of "What time is it?"  For the last fifteen years, I got up at 5:15 (didn't everybody?), hit the campus parking lot by 7:00, was waiting outside my assigned classroom five minutes before my every class, observed office hours meticulously, served dinner precisely at 6:00 PM, and went to bed by 10:00.  I seldom fell behind in my work, but I also didn't do much on the spur of the moment.  Retirement meant that for the first time in 60 years, I could do WHAT I liked WHEN  I wanted to do it.

Did it work? No, of course not -- at least not completely. We live by clocks and calendars whether we intend to or not. But I did try.  Yes, I kept a wall calendar on the door to my office and a date book on my desk, but I only recorded events that had exact time limits -- like meetings, dentist appointments, or dinner dates. When it came to my new writing/publishing career, I was more relaxed.  I refused to put time limits on the things I was working on. I was deliberately vague about when a new book might make an appearance: "Maybe in the Fall" was a typical response. Creativity can't be rushed, I reasoned.

Now, in this first month of a new year, I'm re-thinking the approach again. I learned last year that sometimes events (like a pratfall and broken bones) can utterly destroy the most elaborate plans (like a wonderful South Carolina book tour). But I've also realized something else -- that I can't dilly-dally along without any deadlines. More and more frequently I find that other people ( my editor and book designer, for example) are depending on me to finish certain tasks by a certain date, and that they are organizing their own work to correspond with mine. So even though it's a bit past the deadline for a New Year's Resolution, I'm forcing myself to sit down today and do some serious scheduling for the coming year.

As I look ahead, I need to turn my "To Do" list into a series of deadlines rather than just a "get-around-to-this-sometime" list. In the coming year, I foresee bringing out a second edition of my first (non-medieval) book, turning two biographical novels into audio books, and publishing my first real -- completely fictional -- novel. That's a pretty hefty load, and in fairness to all of those who contribute to my successes, I need to work on a schedule.

Later today, I will post a new page on my Katzenhaus website.  On it, I intend to outline the four projects I have coming up, and the expected deadlines for each one. Please drop by to see what's happening when.  And then help by holding my feet to the fire!

I hung one of those academic-year wall calendars on the door to my office because, whether I'm in a classroom or not, my whole life has been attuned to starting a new year with the start of school.  I can take big blocks of summer to laze around and do things on impulse, but when the first leaf turns, I start to chart my time. 

So I'm sitting here looking across the room at that calendar and trying to future out what all those blocked-out periods of travel are going to mean to my book production schedule. Here's what I see: 

1. I have three weeks coming up during which I should be able to work on the first draft of "Damed Yankee." The third week has the potential to be super-productive because my husband has jury duty, entailing him leaving the house by 7:00 AM every morning. Since I'm not going to want to tackle that rush-hour traffic twice a day, he'll be taking the car and leaving me effectively house-bound. That's OK, though.  That's how I get work done.  I also expect the first proof copy of "Left by the Side of the Road, 2nd ed." to arrive and demand a careful line-edit. 

2. Labor Interruptus: Between September 13 and October 7, I only count eight days when I will not be traveling, and of course they come as individual dates, not strung together in one work period. Those trips promise visits with many old friends, so I want to be free enough to enjoy them without work-guilt. My eight free days will be filled with all the pre-publication stuff that has to happen between the first proof and books hitting the shelf. So, new writing? Probably not. But thinking, planning, and making notes to myself? Absolutely.  That's how I fill  interstate miles. 

3. October is "Nose to the Grindstone" Month. From October 7 on, I see only three evenings booked--two meetings and a wedding. My days are free (so far) to accomplish the following:

5. After Thanksgiving comes one last chance to find some productive writing time, either finishing first draft of "Damed Yankee" or starting a full rewrite. Then on December 12th we hit the road again, managing just two days home  before Christmas. (I'm betting there will be no fruitcake and no Christmas cookies baked this year!) 

So, think retirement means boredom and sitting on your hands with nothing to do?  Think again. So you want to be a writer? Better think that one through again, too.  Want to make some real money? Try being my cat-sitter. As for me? Back to work!

A few days ago, I informed our cat sitter that she was out of a job for the summer. (Yes, we have a cat sitter on retainer. She's wonderful about coming in whenever we leave town to water plants, open and close the shutters, pick up mail, newspapers, and packages, give the 19-year-old cat his morning medicine, and play with the young ones until they're tuckered out) I have good intentions and high hopes for staying home during the hottest part of the summer (all contingent, of course, on the air-conditioner remaining in working condition.) And from now to the middle of September, I'm going into maximum production mode.

Here's what I hope will happen during that three-month period:

1. We have a shower stall leak that will require major repairs involving tearing out the old tile, ripping up wallboard, and replacing everything with a one-piece, easy-care shower compartment that won't require much maintenance. I'll tolerate a few days of noise and mess if it means no one has to keep crawling around on the tile with bleach and re-grouting gunk. Have you ever watched "Holmes on Homes" as he tears out and replaces? Well, wish us similar luck.

2. Our condo association has also scheduled our unit to have its siding painted, so I'll be forced to be up and dressed in the early mornings before painters arrive to peer in the windows while they work.  That's a good thing -- being up and about, that is, not the peering in the windows part!

3. Our favorite non-profit (of which I am now Immediate Past President, thank goodness for the "past" part!) will be holding its annual dinner and auction fund-raiser on August 10th.  I'll be working on it for a couple of days, of course, but no longer in charge -- and it's all here in town.

4. On the writing front, the first half of my next book, Damned Yankee: The Story of a Marriage, will be winging its way to my editor by July 1st.  The chapters are written and now only need a quick a blooper hunt before I let Gaby take an in-depth crack at the content.

5. Meanwhile, I'll be working with the designer to come up with a cover design and a pre-publication trailer -- cover in August, trailer in September.

6. At the same time, I'm working on a second edition of Left by the Side of the Road: Characters without a Novel. If you haven't seen that book, it's a collection of short stories, based on characters and events that didn't make it into my longer historical novels. It is currently enrolled in the KDP Select program, which means that it does not exist elsewhere.  However, you can pick the Kindle edition up for only 99 cents or for free if you're an Amazon Prime member until mid-August. Then the second edition will appear in the regular Kindle listing, as well as in trade paper format and on Smashwords.

7. Before the second edition comes out, I'll be adding new introductions to many of the selections, several new stories, and more links to the books from which the stories disappeared. That's where some of my early summer writing time will be spent.

8. What about the second half of Damned Yankee? I haven't forgotten about it, but I want to make sure that the first half of the story arc is set before I move into part two. Writing there should begin again in August.

9. I'll also spend part of the summer gearing up for a second promotional push for The Road to Frogmore.  In fact, that was my first summer project.  I just finished a re-design of Frogmore's website, so pleases stop by and visit. It will get some new hype at a writers' conference in late September, and then we're scheduling its first-anniversary book tour to South Carolina in November.

10. I may throw in a little pre-publication promotion for Damned Yankee during that trip, since it is set in Charleston, but actual publication is not scheduled until Spring 2014.  There will be time in December for some vacation downtime before then.

And that's "How I'll Be Spending My Summer!"