A brief one only. Everyone needs to recharge on occasion, and I’ve found the best time for me is at the end of the year. This started toward the end of my tenure as a federal employee. I’d accumulated enough PTO and Comp Time that I could take most of December off. That cleared my head for the upcoming year. It was a good habit that I’ve found hard to break.

Also during that tenure, I learned long-range planning. Yes, some bureaucrats do that, and I found that after I retired to pursue my writing career, long-range planning was key, particularly for those authors, like me, who have to do their own marketing and publicity. As well, that end-of-year break also prepared me to execute that long-range planning with efficiency.

Yeah, bureaucratic language still creeps in. Hard to lose after 30+ years of doing it.

Basically, in December, I suspend all social media posting, except perhaps for a “Happy Yule” one. I suspend the bimonthly newsletter and this bimonthly blog.

Do I do anything writing related?

Of course. Mainly, I write without having to stop and schedule social media or create a newsletter or write a blog post. I also develop my plan for the upcoming year:

• What new books, if any, are coming out and when
• What has to be done to ready them for publication (i.e., formatting, cover art, etc.) then promote them
• What graphics do I need to promote the releases
• What changes in the sequence of social media posts do I want for the upcoming year
• What books are going to be on sale each month
• How am I going to promote them
• What book events, workshops, and writing retreats will I attend
• Identifying new book events, workshops, and writing retreats that I might want to attend
• What are the schedules of my editing clients and how will they fit in with my writing/publishing schedule
• What vacations and personal trips will I be taking
• Oh, and grandkids’ birthdays (3), graduations (2), and dance recitals (3) in the coming year

Now, do you see why I take a break from the administrative “stuff.”

In reality, a great deal of what it means to be an author takes time away from the actual writing, which is why I do two or three retreats a year. There are times when I simply want to do nothing more than write. I don’t want to think about marketing or social media presence or convincing people in subtle ways to buy my books. I have stories to tell, a lot of them, before I shuffle off the mortal coil, and to tell them, I have to write them. I have to have the time and headspace to write them, too.