Can you believe we are just sixty-one days away from the end of 2023? I can’t. Really, I cannot. I probably feel this way every year, but this year, I’m really wondering where my time went. I can’t recoup any of it, but I’m finishing strong, as are my friends in Writers Writing Boot Camp group.

There’s a lot of writing and editing happening in this group. We’re established and unpublished writers. We’re typing away at fiction, memoirs, self-help books, and poetry. We have eighteen members. Of those eighteen, thirteen writers attend consistently and nine don’t miss. I’ve kept some records. We’ve written 51,800 words this month, edited many pages, written blog posts, worked on outlines, selected cover art, prepped for conferences, laughed together, and prayed for each other. I personally did very little writing because I received copy edits for my June 2024 novel, Bitter and Sweet and completed revisions for All They Loved, so these women were putting the new words on the page. I would say I’m a proud drill sergeant, but this isn’t that kind of camp. We’re living the soft life on Zoom. There’s no pressure and plenty of pep talks about why there shouldn’t be any.   

You know what else is special? We’re building relationships. Real ones. The kind that you need in this book business.  When one of us is missing, we go looking for her. It’s that serious because it’s truly a community.

As the year begins to wind down, it’s natural to reflect on the goals we set for ourselves. Whether you’re a seasoned author or an aspiring author, the end of the year is an excellent time to examine where you are with respect to your progress and recommit to your writing aspirations.

So, how’s it going?