Marquessa Matthews over at marquessamatthews.com wrote a great blog post asking what ONE THING will you leave behind in 2019?

I noticed that a lot of people around me had a pretty terrible year. I won’t say that my 2019 was all good, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. I’m excited to step into 2020, but there are a lot of things I am taking forward with me from 2019.

But when I turn that on its head and ask myself what I want to leave behind, the answer is clear to me: I want to leave behind my determination to be perfect.

No one is perfect. My favorite writers have typos in their work, even with professional editors. As I re-read some of my favorite novels, I notice inconsistencies in small details. And it doesn’t make me love the novel or the author any less. If anything, it makes me love them more to see that they are human just like me.

So, in 2020, I hope to be less perfect, and publish more. And definitely write more, since my goal is 1,000,000 words in 2020! (Does anyone want to join me on that? My friend Nicki is. In fact, it was her idea. And I am so excited!)

No matter how good (or bad) your 2019 was, here’s hoping 2020 is even better!

Tonight, my husband said I love you without those three words. After a grueling day that ended with multiple meltdowns (from me and our child), I sat down to do bills. He came up behind me and said, “Do you need a beating?” I looked up at him in surprise and he said, “I know when you get stressed, sometimes you need that release.”

And damn if he isn’t right.

After I wrote my post on August 9th, two of my friends messaged me privately to ask what a “little” is. They hadn’t heard the term before and were waiting for the sentence to end. Such as, “she started to show some signs of being a little _________, too.” Fill in the blank: person, brat, what!?

So here I am to share what (little) knowledge I have of littles. I looked at urbandictionary, (a crap shoot for sure), but I found that their definition was pretty good:

“A little is someone that likes to act younger then they really are. It’s kind of like having an alter ego that’s much younger then yourself. Most littles don’t act little 24/7, but when they do slip into their younger alter ego it’s called slipping into headspace.”

They go on to define the age range as 0-8, which made me wonder: What about people who identify older than that? It turns out there’s a term for that, too! It’s, unsurprisingly, “middle.” Some places seem to define middles as 12-15, but others go as young as 9 (which fits with the “little” definition above).

In any case, it may seem weird to think about, but the key to remember about any of this topic is that it is…

always between consenting adults. Always.

So while it may seem odd to think of adults pretending to be, or acting as, children, we all know they are still adults. They look like them and act like them when they are out of the bedroom. I mean, we don’t think that someone who likes nipple clamps wears them all the time, do we? 😉

As I stated in my previous post on the 9th, I don’t have really any experience with it. None myself, and very little in my readings, but it is something many people are into. I’m not sure if I have enough background knowledge to take a fictional character that way, but maybe someday!

And if you want more information from people better informed than I am, I would encourage you to look around. The internet is chock full of information… both reliable and not. So tread carefully!

Yesterday, I Tweeted:

I have a new author plan: Write all the words and then when I’m rich and my kids are grown, pay someone to edit and publish them. #amediting #mostlykidding #semiserious

I have been following the Writing Is Communication Blog for a long time now thanks to the A to Z Blog Challenge (which is coming up again! You should sign up for it!).

For the month of March, Shari Marshall from Writing is Communication has offered for her readers to share things they are thankful for. Yesterday, she suggested listing moments you were ecstatic.

I hate to steal some of hers, but they are so true!
1) The night my husband proposed. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but there was the ring. And here it sits on my finger more than 10 years later. I am so excited to celebrate 10 years together this summer.
2) The day we got married. It was such a stellar day. From start to finish. The issues we had (because of course there were issues) were funny, and at the end of it, I had a great time sharing my love with all my family and friends.
3) The day my daughter was born. She was so perfect and precious. She tried our patience a short while later and continues to do so to this day, but that’s kids, eh?
4) The day I got my dream job. I was offered a job doing exactly what I wanted right out of college. I celebrate 11 years there this year, and I’m so grateful that they took a chance on me.
5) The day my first novel was published. It was so cool to see the sales go! Meager, yes, but still!

For as long as I can remember, I have been making a big deal about Valentine’s Day. I remember when I was 16, I spent Valentine’s Day with my boyfriend and three of my single friends. We all went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. I don’t remember what my justification was at the time, but now I have words to put to it.

There is not enough love in the world.

Valentine’s Day is a great day to make an effort to celebrate with those we love. I get gifts for my kids, we make Valentine’s Day themed food, and we exchange cards. It’s silly sometimes, but we love it. And one of my kids who is grown still talks about the year we wrote things we love about the kids and taped them to their bedroom doors (one a day for two weeks). And… I might not have had the heart (heh) to take them down. It’s been three years.

So, go out and spread the love every day, but especially this day. And tell me, what’s your relationship with Valentine’s Day?

It’s nice when there are weekends without a lot of plans. I always think I am going to get sooooo much done. Unfortunately, that’s not the reality of my life. I did get a lot done, and I bought a cute new dress!

My kitchen is significantly cleaner than it was. My phone pictures have been cleared off, and I have several new books to read (both digital and paper).

My husband and I have had some quality kid-free time together, but I was not feeling kinky. That may be why I’m having trouble going back to writing my novel, too. I don’t suspect my disinterest will last long though. It rarely does.

I accidentally took a hiatus from my blog. Whoops. I didn’t mean to. November was crazy, but I had prepared for it and pre-scheduled my posts so I just had to fill in word counts and details. And then I knew December would be awful, but now we’re halfway through January and I haven’t posted…

But now I’m back!

I need to get back into regular writing again, but I wrote a lot of words in November! Good ones, mostly. I have to do some editing and publishing, but I also think I wrote the first novel where a sequel speaks to me. It’s begging to be written. But I need to figure out what the hell I actually wrote in the first one in November. So, that’s what I’m working on right now. (Well not *right now*. I’m writing this blog post *right now*. But when I’m done with this post, I’m going to do something related to that project. I promise.

Oh wait… after I delete a lot of the 860 emails in my inbox I haven’t looked at. Whoops. (And I am the 0 new read email type of person!)

Thanks for hanging in there with me! ❤

I am back at editing! It’s a slow process, but I got through two more chapters. Hopefully I can make a lot of headway soon. My schedule is going to clear up a lot after this week, so fingers crossed that I can get Y is for Yes out by the end of the month!

I wanted to have another novel published this summer. I pushed in August to get one done. And yet… nothing is even remotely close to being publish-ready.

As a good friend of mine says, “It is what it is.”

But I’m not giving up! I’m going to keep trying. I have no idea what I’m writing in November, so I need to figure that out before we get to NaNo. So if I can finish and publish this novel by mid-October, that would give me some time to figure out what the hell I’m doing for November…

Sorry this post got boring. But the message is:

Don’t give up on your goals!

The other day, as I was catching up on blogs, I came across a post from Meg Sorick which included the following quote:

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful for the way she thought. She was beautiful for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful deep down to her soul. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

I loved Meg’s take on the quote and how it related to her writing, but it’s something that I have thought a lot about in my own life, as well as in my writing.

In my writing, sometimes my main character isn’t described physically in a lot of detail. As some of my friends have read those works, I asked if they noticed and they didn’t. They all kind of imagined themselves in the role, which makes sense as it’s first-person writing. I want to allow the reader to fill in the blank with whatever physical characteristics they fantasize about or apply to them.

But I realize that this method doesn’t work for everyone, and sometimes I write very detailed descriptions of the characters. But I notice when I read novels, I tend to get bored reading a paragraph long description of physical characteristics. I’m fine if it comes out gradually, but even in prominent name writer’s books, sometimes it gets to be too much for me.

But let’s talk about me for a minute (since it’s my blog and all). I have *always* had a problem with self-image. I know some of you reading this know what I’m talking about. I constantly find myself thinking that my belly has grown in the past few years, and that my thighs are just so massive, and that I wish the flab on my arms would go away. I go to the gym when my physical abilities allow me to. I work in a job where I’m on my feet all day. I try to eat healthy as often as I can. It’s just one of those things.

And yet, when I look at the people I date, really look at them, they aren’t any more perfect than I am. But I find each one of them sexy and/or cute. And each one has a physical characteristic (or two) that I am really attracted to, but what really draws me to these people is who they are on the inside and how they make me feel. What makes me care about someone is not what they look like, but who they are.

So why can’t I apply that same logic to my own looks? My partners frequently tell me that I am beautiful or sexy. I know that I make people smile. One of my best friends calls me Sunshine. But sometimes (okay, most of the time), I have trouble seeing it. But I try to remember quotes like this one, which stuck out in my mind for days. I try to see myself as others see me. And I try to remind myself that it’s not about my big thighs or my pudgy belly, but the way I make others feel that really matter.