ROW80 and Why I'm Behind in My Goals

It's time for a ROW80 update. The current round of A Round of Words in 80 Days runs from October 3rd to December 22nd. My goal during this round of ROW80 is to a) revise one of my WIPs and b) write the outline for a shiny new idea.

Since my last update I revised four chapters of my WIP, so I have 23 out of 29 chapters revised. My favorite part of writing is revising because I get to see the sloppy first draft take shape and become a real novel. 

I tweaked the outline for my shiny new idea, but not by much. I'll revisit it soon and tweak some more.

Tiki huts brought Carol Kilgore to mind.

Paradise

I consider myself slightly behind in my writing goals. The main reason for this was being out of town during Thanksgiving week. First I visited the Florida Keys and right after that I went to Chicago for the ALAN conference. I went from one extreme to another, warm to cold. I enjoyed both trips immensely.

I was too chicken to completely step onto 
the glass balcony of Skydeck.

I missed quite a bit of the ALAN conference. On day one I arrived late not only because of the timing of my plane ride, but because I played tourist before checking into the conference. I get a kick out of exploring big cities.

On day two I was on the panel Traversing the boundary between insider and outsider: Learning a language and culture and helping shape the future with J.L. Powers and Claudia G. Martinez. It was my first panel discussion. I was both excited and nervous, but it went well. I took numerous pictures of Chicago but failed to take conference pictures (which was bad of me since there were so many awesome authors, librarians, and teachers there). But when my camera isn't out, others are. Here is one picture of me at ALAN someone was nice enough to take. 

The windy city...but it wasn't that windy during my stay. 

The conference was only two days, so on day three I continued to play tourist. The trip was fantastic, but there were some places I didn't get to visit because of time constraints. The only snag on this trip was the shuttle ride to the airport. I almost missed my plane back to Florida because of a late driver and bad traffic. Fortunately, I made it in time for Thanksgiving.

And since it's the holiday season and I'm in a giving mood, don't miss out on an international book giveaway I posted last week. The details are here. 

I did quite a bit of holiday shopping last weekend, but I need to resume soon since I'm not a last minute person. I'm about half-way done, but I haven't tackled cards yet. How's your writing and shopping going along?