My Dear Friends,

I call you friends because that’s honestly how I see you all.  Over the past two years or so that I’ve been blogging under the iggi&gabi name I feel like I’ve gotten to know you as writers and readers and I consider myself so very lucky to have such awesome people supporting this blog.  This is why this post is probably one of the hardest I’ve had to write.  Don’t worry.  I won’t get super-sentimental on you, but you’ll have to forgive me if I get a bit misty-eyed.

As many of you already know, I’m expecting a new addition to my little family: Lawyer-hubby and I are having a baby!  Originally, I thought I’d be able to juggle a soon-to-arrive new baby and a new business and this blog, but as I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized that I’ll have to take more than just a two month hiatus from iggi&gabi.

See, Baby Peanut is not the only new addition to my life.  This past September I launched DIY MFA as a business and I have ambitious plans for it in 2012.  I don’t think of this hiatus from iggi&gabi as leaving the blogsphere altogether, but rather, I plan to consolidate everything under the DIY MFA umbrella.  So if you haven’t already done so, check out the DIY MFA blog.  I will continue posting there and have really exciting plans for the new year so stay tuned!

Also, for those of you who periodically need their iggi fix, fear not!  I will be keeping the iggi&gabi site up, I just won’t be posting updates for a while.

As for YA Cafe: Ghenet will continue posting YA-related awesomeness, so follow her blog All About Them Words for more YA Cafe.  The schedule may be a little different so check her blog for more details!

Most importantly, I wanted to say thank you to all of you for being such wonderful and supportive readers.  I’ve been so lucky to have such great people in my corner these past years.  I hope I see you over at DIY MFA so we can keep sharing our obsessions with writing and books!

As always, keep writing!  And keep being awesome!

I am so excited to be participating in ROW80 this fall!  I’m new to this challenge but I have a writing friend who did it in the spring and said it was awesome so I just had to try.  Now I can’t wait to get started.  This weekend, I did a little browsing and looked at some other writers’ goals to get ideas for how I wanted to structure my own.  I decided on approaching my goals in terms of a weekly schedule.  This way, it still gives me some flexibility day-to-day (which is key considering my sometimes unpredictable schedule), but will be structured enough to keep me accountable.

In addition, I decided I would focus my writing on DIY MFA content, since this is the big project on my plate right now.  I’m going to try to sneak in a little editing for my latest fiction WIP, but really the main part of my goals will focus on cranking out and editing new content for DIY-MFA-related products and features.

Finally, I had another reason for focusing on DIY MFA.  This project is focused on platform-building and putting together an entrepreneurial business based on my author brand.  I thought that not only would ROW80 help boost my productivity, but the check-in posts would give me a concrete written record of how I’m building this business as I go along, which could come in handy down the road.

So without further ado, here are my goals.  Each week, I will…

1. Revise one chapter of my fiction WIP.  I have six chapters in need of revision, so this will take me through the first six weeks of the challenge, which works out nicely because then I can put the WIP on the back-burner and ramp up DIY MFA work.
2. Write and publish the 4 weekly DIY MFA blog posts.  In addition, I will try to write one or two post drafts so I can stay ahead of schedule on the editorial calendar.
3. Write and publish a minimum of 3 posts here at iggi&gabi.  This will include the two ROW80 check-in posts and the Friday YA Cafe posts.  If additional topics of interest come up, I might add a 4th weekly post.
4. Write one DIY MFA newsletter every week.  This will start in late October or early November (coinciding approximately with my finishing the WIP chapter revisions.)
5. Write 5000 words of DIY MFA flagship content.  This flagship content will include any copy that needs to get written for DIY MFA products, courses or features.  I will schedule this writing so that I do approximately 1250 words per day, four days per week.

These tasks are the absolute minimum I must do each week in order to stay on schedule with all my projects.  On one hand, these goals make me nervous because they are a bit steep, but on the other hand none of this is stuff I wouldn’t be doing anyway so it’s win-win.  If I must drop one of my goals, it will be the revisions on the fiction WIP, which can always head to the back-burner for a little bit longer while I get DIY MFA set up.

What about you?  Are you doing ROW80 or do you have any particular goals for this fall?  If so, what are they?

No, it’s not a book.  It’s better than a book.  Actually it’s just about the only thing I can think of that could trump a book deal in my world!

*drum roll please*

Lawyer-hubby and I are having a baby!  It’s due at the end of January (just in time to conflict with the Writers’ Digest and SCBWI conferences *grumble grumble*) and right now Peanut’s about halfway ready to meet us in the real world.  We just found out last week that Peanut’s a boy.  (And yes, we’re calling him Peanut for now because while I can think of a gazillion names for my various characters, I can’t seem to think of a single one for my own child.)

So, what does this mean for iggi&gabi?  I’ll tell you.

1) This will not morph into a mommy-blog.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against mommy blogs.  In fact, I think they’re great and I definitely love reading them, but iggi&gabi is not destined to be one of mommy-blog tribe.  I’ll continue posting about writing and books, though I’m sure you’ll understand if my reading takes a turn toward picture books for a while.  Also, I may have to post the occasional picture of the bambino and I hope you’ll forgive me.

2) I will have to take a hiatus in late January/early February.  Not sure yet how much of a hiatus it will be (I’m hoping to write a bunch of posts in advance so that I can still be here for you even if I’m not actually *here*).  But between the upcoming website for DIY MFA and this blog, it’s a lot to juggle, especially when you add bringing a little person into the world, so I may have to take a few weeks off just to get myself back on a schedule.  Speaking of schedules…

3) This fall I will be setting up a schedule for iggi&gabi.  This is both to help me preserve my sanity and also to make sure I stay accountable to this blog, and to you.  This summer I’ve been all loosey-goosey about my posting and I want to turn things around.  I’ll be announcing said schedule either later this week or after the holiday weekend.  If you have any suggestions or ideas, please do share!

So that’s the scoop!

Some of you may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet here at iggi&gabi.  Don’t worry, the radio silence doesn’t mean I’m gone completely!  Actually, it’s because of some sooper-seekrit but sooper-exciting things that I’m working on that I haven’t had as much time to post as I would like.  I can’t give all the details right now (in part because I don’t know all of them yet) but I can give you a taste of what’s to come.

Author Interviews and Guest Posts:  I’m working with some publicists to start getting interviews and guest posts from published authors.  I think it would be so helpful for aspiring authors (myself included!) to see how published authors do what they do and be able to pick their brains a bit.  I’m really excited about this and as soon as I know more details, you all will be the first to know.  Are there any specific topics you want to hear authors talk about?  Let me know and I’ll try to make it happen!

WIP Revisions: That’s right, after letting my manuscript “breathe” for a few months, I have jumped into revisions.  I have set a steep goal for myself (a chapter a day) and it’s consuming mountains of time.  I’m slightly terrified because no matter how much I shape or polish, it still doesn’t feel done.  Every time I get to the end, I turn around and go straight back to the beginning and start rewriting.  Again.  Is there such a thing as over-revising?  Please help!  Do you have words of wisdom to share about revision?  Any advice on how to tackle this monster?  Most importantly, how do you know when it’s done?

DIY MFA: This is the most exciting of all!  I’ve decided that because DIY MFA 1&2 were so successful, I’m going to expand this project beyond this blog.  I’m working on restructuring and reorganizing the program and giving DIY MFA a home of its very own.  Rather than having DIY MFA happen in short spurts once or twice a year, I want to create a community where writers can engage with DIY MFA year-round.  What kind of features do you want to see in DIY MFA?  Articles?  Videos?  More downloads like the workbook?  Let me know how DIY MFA can best help you!