A Big Change

Other than the website, I've made another huge change in my life in the last couple of weeks. For the last nearly six years I've spent most of every day running the RWC groups for other romance writers. That means approving messages and members, moderating each messages, sending out reminders, sending out talk prompts, writing prompts, writing challenges, and so on, seven days a week from usually before five in the morning until at least nine at night.

At first it wasn't that big of a deal, but the little group I started and hoped to see maybe have fifty or even a hundred members one day, now has almost 1,600, and that's on the main RWC group alone. There are ten RWC groups in all, and since people can belong to any they wish and not any they don’t wish, there's no way of knowing how many RWC members there are in total.

With ten groups and so many members, it has become a draining job over the last three years or so. I finally had no choice but to either close down the groups, are yell for help, and lots of it. There are now about sixteen of us doing what I had been handling all along. I've removed myself from a lot of duties, or at least will as soon as everyone has their sea legs---moderator legs that is. (Smile.)

I've really enjoyed helping so many people with their writing, but I've been short-changing my own writing for too long now. I realized I'm not getting any younger and I've been pushing my own dreams to the back burner and then to the back of that burner even. I either have little time to write, or will to write by the time I take care of every thing and maybe get my head bit off a few times for sending someone a reminder when they broke a rule. In the end, most days I just never make it to my own writing.

I've been through this before because of a sick parent or major health issues of my own, and even because of a hurricane, but those things we have no control over. This is something I do have control over, so it's just silly for me to let more time slip away when others are willing to help me with the groups so it's not too much on any one person. The groups can only become better from the extra time and energy these members bring with them, and time to take care of myself and work toward my own dream can only make me a better person. I think this is a win/win situation for everyone involved.

After I get all of the moderators and helpers doing their thing, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off to get myself together, and then we'll see if I'm willing to put as much effort into my writing as I've poured into RWC. It's easy to talk the talk, but hard to apply butt to chair, fingers to keyboard, and actually keep writing even when you don't feel good, you've gotten a rejection, or the story is just giving you a hard time.

By the way, did you notice my new site is now centered around my author page instead of my writing info pages for other writers? Don't worry, all the same info is still there, it's just that now the home page is my author site and to get to the writing info there is a link on that site to click on. It's my way of saying to the world that my writing is going to come first for a change.

Stayed tuned. (Smile.)