Dear Alice,

New year, new stuff.

My trip to New York was good. My three days there flew by quickly. We had heavy snow on Friday which made our lunch at the Boathouse very beautiful. Can't beat watching it snow in Central Park while eating great food and drinking fabulous wine! Saturday we met up with a friend of my niece at a diner near NYU and then spent the rest of the day wandering the Chelsea neighborhood. I got a good feeling of the neighborhood but now am wishing I'd spent a week puttering around there and now just the small amount of time I did. Sunday we slept in and then went to a matinee of The Addams Family. Times Square was amazing and we wandered into a French restaurant for dinner.

I haven't written much since I got home, just about a page. I had surgery the day after I got back from NY and have been pretty tired. On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of good thinking done and the story should start to take off once I actually sit down and get into it. Tomorrow I have the first of the two readings I'm doing with the winners of the writing contest. I've never done anything like this before so it should be interesting.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked back and compared where I was professionally last year compared with now. Last year, I had a nearly completed first manuscript and was excited about where that was going. I'd begun plotting the sequel and had started thinking about finding an agent. This year, I've edited that manuscript more times than I can count and am STILL waiting for my beta readers to provide me with feedback on my heavily revised Chapter 1. Maybe I need to find an actual editing group. I completed my children's story after having worked on it off and on for the last 5 years and it won a prize in a writing contest. I took 3 classes on how to write a query letter and two on how to write a synopsis. I queried more than 50 agents on my first manuscript and around 20 on my children's story. I joined two writer's associations, attended their conventions, and have taken classes. I did an online convention and took a writing class from the guy I sat next to at the June convention (who gave me the idea for my current WIP). Because of him, I now have a stash of story ideas where last year I had only the sequel and my two children's books. (One got written last year, one I'm still blocking.)

I'm feeling more like a writer this year but in some ways I'm more discouraged as every career I pick ends up getting rid of people just as I am ready to walk through the door. I know amazing writers out there that just can't seem to get either a) an agent or b) an agent that's made a sale. My goal this year is to accept that I may just be stuck (yes, stuck) being a housewife who dabbles in teaching and writing but has no true place she belongs (I kind of suck at being a housewife). My epitaph would read something like, "She had good intentions but never excelled." Sad.