What Am I Writing?

I often get the question, "So, what are you working on?"  I've noticed of late that more often than not my response is a waving of the hands and saying, "You know...stuff."

How very eloquent and writerly of me, no?

So I thought I"d share what I am working on these days:

  • I've just finished a 1200-word article on Goal-setting for my Market Savvy column for Art Jewelry magazine. I like the content and mulling over ways I can repurpose the article and sell it to other magazines.
  • I'm getting ready to start brainstorming ideas for my next Pet-A-Scopes column. You've got to love a job that requires you to sit and think hard if you can come up with anything funny related to pooper-scoopers or a cat's predisposition to barf.
  • I've just completed a 900-word article on Networking for NC Career Networking Magazine. I pulled this column out at the last minute and am chastizing myself for not being better organized so I'm not scrambling for ideas last minute.
  • Public-speaking book. I was spending 2 hours on this each morning after returning from England, but last week I don't think I touched it. I'd like to get it into draft shape so I can send it out for comments to friends before rewriting. I'm spending a fair amount of time thinking about formats--ways to structure the information, and need to spend some time this week in Barnes & Nobles, looking through business books for format ideas.
  • I had an idea for a first reader or picture book and went to the library and checked out about 20 first reader books so I can get an idea of how they're put together and what the sentence structure is like. A task for this week is to read and evaluate the books and see if I still like my idea enough to rough out a story.
  • I've been dreaming new ideas for a brand new adult novel. I'm not going to talk about it yet b/c I don't really have the story formed yet and don't want to interrupt the creative process. I'm not technically "writing" this yet, but it's on the radar.
  • I've got 2 middle-grade novels I'm supposed to be working on editing/writing and I haven't hardly touched those in weeks either.

Other writing is I've been bidding on a lot of projects on GURU. I'm wondering if I've priced myself out of this market though, as I've bid on 12 jobs this month and have not heard back from one of them. GURU is great if you're willing to work cheap or if you have strong expertise in one area. Not so great for the middle man, or that's my take.

I also try to blog every other day and I say I'm going to start my journal again, but that doesn't seem to have happened--at least not on a consistent basis.