Holiday Recap: A Writer's Perspective

Here it is: my first Writer's Voice post of 2012! I hope that everyone had a truly marvelous holiday season. And hopefully you've entered our Happy Holidays Giveaway...I'm really looking forward to giving away signed copies of the Daughters of Saraqael trilogy to one of you!

As for me, my holidays were nice. I know, I know...nice is such a banal word choice, isn't it? But that's the truth of it.

When we think of the holidays, we generally think of the time of year when we're happier and reflective on where the past year has brought us. It's a time when we catch up with family and slow things down for a couple of weeks. We allow the shopping fervor that propelled us through Thanksgiving to die down and we try to decompress.

Right?

Well, at least in my case, not so much. While my wedding planning career was on a bit of a hiatus during the last two weeks of December, my author career was in high gear. I was participating in giveaways, interviews and guest posts. I joined in with eleven other bloggers and did a massive 12 Blogs of Christmas extravaganza. I even did what I could to promote my books through social media on Christmas Day, when tons of e-readers and bookstore gift cards were unwrapped by happy recipients.

Vacation? What vacation? I don't need no stinkin' vacation. (Okay...so maybe I do if I'm resorting to writing sentences that require the use of a terrible fake accent to work).

Anyhow, I'll add here that I spent New Year's Eve sitting with my laptop poised on an end table in the family room while my family and friends played games on the Wii so that I could get more work done on Shift, Book Two of the upcoming Firstborn trilogy. I sent my husband and daughter off to play mini-golf yesterday so that I could write some more. And although I'm back to wedding planning full-time as of this morning, I'm writing this blog post now and I'll stay up late tonight putting in more time on Shift.

I'm not sure that anyone other than a fellow writer can understand how challenging a writing career can be. Making time to write--especially if it isn't our only job--means making sacrifices, and those sacrifices must be weighed with care. I had a number of choices to make this holiday season, and many of them resulted in me missing out on "fun" things so that I could focus on my writing career.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't ignore my family or obligations over the holidays. I helped bake cookies, went gift shopping and wrapped presents until almost midnight on Christmas Eve. I watched Christmas movie classics, read Christmas stories and took my daughter out to see the neighborhood lights. I sent holiday cards, made Christmas phone calls and even hosted Christmas dinner.

What I didn't do was sleep. But hey...I don't need no stinkin' sleep.

Tell me about your holidays! What are your reading and writing resolutions?