SONG OF THE WEEK: “eez-eh” by Kasabian — New music from one of my favorite bands. Score!

PROGRESS FOR THE WEEK: NaNo project that I’m totally over — 2,000 words. Shiny new women’s fiction project I’ve been wanting to write for like five years now — 4,000 words today alone. (shh!)

It’s been a while since I wrote one of those inspirational blog posts where I encourage you to write if it’s your passion. I’ll be honest, there are many days where I want to get on this blog and scream at you, “Don’t do it! Zoning out to the television is for sure the way to go. Only complete masochists submit themselves to this crap.”

But for so many of us, there is no option. We have to write. There’s this nagging creature that resides deep inside our brain that dumps this huge amount of guilt on us if we even entertain the thought of quitting for a brief moment — even after we’ve been sitting in front of a blank screen for three days.

This industry is brutal. It sucks you in like a tornado and spins you right round, baby, like a freaking cyclone. One day you’ll feel like the road to publication is completely hopeless, and why aren’t I sitting in front of the television right now getting caught up on 87 episodes of last summer’s Big Brother?

But then, from within your miserable one-room cell, the scrape of the metal door above you has you looking up, and you get thrown a tiny little scrap of a bone. Hope.

So, it is with a bold sense of beaming pride that I announce that my first YA contemporary romance story has finaled in the Contemporary Romance Writers Stiletto contest.

What does this mean? Probably nothing. But my twenty pored over pages will go before two editors from two very impressive publishing houses. If they like what they read, they will request more or contact me. That’s it. Oh, and they will decide who “wins” of the three finalists. But really, haven’t all three of us already won?