So for the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve been struggling to stay afloat in the new semester. I’m working two part-time jobs—teaching two classes and tutoring online through Pearson---and it’s A LOT, when you add it to being a stay-at-home mom. Damien is also teaching two classes, also working another part-time job (as Managing Editor for New Ohio Review) for about twenty hours a week. Trying to get the hang of the new, busy busy busy schedule has been a handful. And to put it bluntly, I haven’t been writing. Not at all. Not a sentence. Not a word.

We’re into week five of the semester now, though, and we’re finally starting to feel in the swing of things. It doesn’t really mean we’re any less busy, of course. If anything, things are starting to get busier as we’re beginning to collect papers from our students. But we’ve at least started to figure out how to deal with my online tutoring hours in the midst of Damien’s New Ohio Review workload and both of our lesson planning and grading obligations. One of us is always there with Amalie, and for the most part, Amalie doesn’t seem to notice how busy her parents have become, or that she’s spending larger portions of time with one or the other of us (and less time, unfortunately, with both of us at the same time).

And so, I’m feeling ready, again, to start adding a writing schedule back into the mix. And to do it, I’ve enlisted the help of my friend and fellow UAF MFAer Jenni Moody. Jenni and I have both been planning on getting to work on a novel. For me, this will be my third go at novel writing (maybe three times will be a charm?). But even though I’ve written and revised two novels before, I still feel completely insecure at the outset about my ability to do this (who knows, maybe it’s because I’ve been down this road before—a road that has yet to end in publication for me—that I’m so anxious about starting down it yet again). Even though I feel really excited about this idea I have, even though I have a lot of ideas for what might happen in the story, still, STILL I’ve been having trouble mustering up the courage to just sit down and get started.

And that’s where Jenni comes in. Jenni and I have committed to doing a joint goal system for our respective novel projects. We’re both hoping to have a full draft of our novels done by next summer. To get there, we’re going to set goals together and encourage each other—checking in along the way. It should help to make the long, lonely road of novel writing a little less lonely, and it should help to keep us motivated. I know for me, I’ll feel embarrassed if I have to admit to Jenni that I didn’t meet a goal, so the fact that we’re doing this together will push me that extra little bit to really DO it.

We’re starting off fairly slow. Our first 10,000 words are supposed to be completed by November 15^th. At that point we’ll check in, hopefully applaud each other’s success at meeting the goal, and set a new goal for the next chunk. I suspect after having the first 10,000 words behind us, we’ll be ready to pick up speed a bit and set a bit more strenuous goal for the next milestone, but even if we don’t, this slow and steady pace should still see us with a finished draft, each, by next summer.

I’m excited to have someone to share the novel writing experience with, and I know it’ll be fun checking in with Jenni along the way. I’m ready! I’m determined! Let's do this thing! Go!