My intention was to spend all this month working on my twenty-first novel, The Unselfish Uncle. I even signed up for NaNoWriMo to help push me to finish the novel quickly.

Alas, my editor, bless her evil soul, informed me that my website (this website) was in terrible shape. “You’re links are not up to date. You don’t have all your books listed. How do you expect to sell any books if you haven’t done the basics, Mattie?”

She threw in a few other comments, all of which shamed me into putting aside Unselfish Uncle for a couple of days and turning my attention to this website. So I started checking the links, the pages, whatever is here, and discovered that she was right. The site was not in good shape. It needed a lot of work.

That’s the problem with websites. They don’t take care of themselves. They are like infants, in that respect. They’re cute sometimes, but at other times they need to be cleaned up and made adorable again. So, for the past three days, that’s what I’ve been doing.

I’m sure if I was a professional web designer, it would have taken me a lot less time. But I sort of have to re-learn how to use the site each time I and told to fix it up. The learning process is good, but I regret the time lost (or invested, if I’m going to be a glass half full kind of girl). But, most of the site is up to date at this point.

However, I discovered that my latest books are not uploaded to several distribution channels. I’ve got to invest (spend, since I’m also a glass half empty kind of girl) some time in uploading my books to these channels.

But I also have to get back to writing Unselfish Uncle. I’m not sure if I can make up the lost word production for the past three days or so, but I will try.

Thankfully, I got through Election Day. Unfortunately, I ruined my diet, half the people I voted for didn’t win (I’m a “half empty type of girl), and I under-performed in meeting my writing goals. But now, with all that behind me, I have some very clear goals:

• Get back on my diet
• Stop watching cable news
• Learn to appreciate that some of my choices did actually win
• And get back into writing my twenty-first novel, The Unselfish Uncle

I also have a specific goal for today. I need to write three scenes instead of one or two. While it’s only 3000 words, writing three scenes requires that I have all the plotting, subplotting, and background plotting done for those chapters. Since I am introducing some new characters in the story (they’ve been mentioned before, but now MacFarland gets to interview them), I have to understand a fair amount of detail about the character, even if the character ultimately tells MacFarland, “I didn’t see anything.”

But that’s the joy of writing. You get to play around with all these characters, making them dance to your tune. Well, most of the time. I often discover that characters in my story have minds of their own and frequently take my story in directions I didn’t fully expect.

So, time to get back to work. And not worry about elections for another two years.