Welcome to Summer 2014

So it's time for a change of gears!

My grades have been submitted. I'm spending the majority of my days in my bathrobe. The air conditioner is blaring.

Yep. It's summer again!

And my goodness, am I grateful.

I've been on vacation for about a week, and so far, it's been pretty amazing, and believe it or not, pretty productive, in my own Katie sort of way. Of course, I had to decompress after the craziness that was April and early May, but I'm coming off of that now, and I'm in the mood to get things done, which is a good thing. I'm off of work until July 9th, and as always, I've got a good stack of things I want to accomplish.

1. My poetry manuscript. Very, very important. So, this is the same ms. I slaved away over last summer, and I thought I was done with it. I'd been submitting it a handful of places, got a few sniffs, and things are looking good. BUT, it's too short. So guess what I'm doing now? :D And believe it or not, it's been pretty smooth going. I'm really feeling good about this book, and I have high hopes for it. Keeping my fingers crossed (and typing, of course).

2. Reviews. I've fallen a little behind with my review column, so I'm spending my afternoons on that. Right now, I'm reading Frost in Low Areas from Zone 3 press. I have a little stack of books to review, and I want to the bottom of that stack by the time I go back to work. It's a good thing.

3. Plan a dynamite creative writing course for summer II. I'm seriously excited about teaching creative writing. It's my first time :-) :-) :-) 

4. Blog! Because I don't do that enough anymore.

5. Submit submit submit. Once I have my poetry manuscript in tip-top shape, I want to work on placing some of my pieces in lit journals again. I'm thinking of renewing my Duotrope  account so I can be a little more strategic than I've been in the past year. This is important.

6. Learn to somehow take it easy? LOLS. Not going to happen.

I've decided to put my fiction writing and big memoir plans on hold for now. My main focus is getting this poetry manuscript in the best shape possible.

So yep, my summer is looking pretty nice.

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