2010 CHECKLIST

We're in the last quarter of 2010. What are you working on both personally and professionally? I've decided to post my list so I'll be forced to check it off before Christmas or face public humiliation!

Professional Projects

1. Compile list of agents to query
2. Query said agents (for my women's fiction)
3. Start back on my JANO project (novel #2)
4. Continue to submit monthly poems to the David Harrison site
5. Update my blog weekly
6. Draft my non-fiction book proposal
7. Write one or two more picture books
8. Write the JANO press release and JANO page for our site
9. Attend monthly writers' meetings
10. Add more recipes to my cookbook
11. Ponder novel #3 (plot ideas and character bios) for JANO 2011

Personal projects

1. Place books on my new bookshelves
2. Decorate for Halloween (oops. It's almost here. Might as well skip.)
3. Decorate for Christmas
4. Buy five gifts for November birthdays
5. Buy Christmas gifts for twenty people! Ack.
6. Get new curtains/shades for my office
7. Bake more for hubby

That's enough for now. How about you? What's on your checklist?

OUR FAMILY: FOREVER CHANGED

HOW CAN SHE BE GONE?
By Beth Carter

How can she be gone?
She was just here this summer.
Unfair, brutal death.

Still in disbelief.
Our family is in grief.
A sweet, gentle soul.

I hold on tighter
to my family and friends.
She was killed. Still shocked.

Note: This is a combination of three haikus I've written about my niece's recent death. I've written a much more personal poem but will wait until the killer is caught before posting it. Thank you to everyone for your amazing support. RIP, dear sweet Shana.