Ack! That is how I feel right now. So many parties, Christmas shopping, house cleaning to get READY for it all. I had fully intended to do some editing on my book during lunch yesterday. THEN I remembered…during lunch I had to 1)Buy a sweater or sweatshirt for the ugly sweater contest at the party I had to attend last night, 2) Purchase ugly things to put on said sweater/sweatshirt, 3) Purchase food for the party (I forgot to make anything), 4) Actually put ugly things on the sweatshirt. My lunch hour was shot. I got back home too late from the party to do any editing. Tonight is church night, so editing might happen, but only a little. Why do we finish up books this time of year? I really, really wanted a Christmas release. I could probably get the first round of editing done, but I can’t expect my beta readers to drop everything this time of year to read my book. I happen to know one of them is extremely busy right now, and the others probably are, too. I think I’ve actually probably lost one beta reader due to the fact she’s so busy all the time.

I don’t believe I’m going to have a Christmas release. The upside to this is that most of my book sales have always been in January and February, because people are finding books to download on their shiny new Kindles, Nooks, iPads, etc. The downside is that most people already own a reading device now, so there aren’t as many new ones, therefore, not so many downloads. It’s not like 2011 when I had GREAT sales in those two months, and one of my books got up to 134 in the Kindle store. There are too many writers publishing now. It’s hard to get noticed. And, I’m totally rambling and getting off-topic. Where was I? Oh, yeah.

So, do you feel like it’s a huge challenge to write or edit during the holidays? How do you handle this? Do you try to schedule some time for it, or do you just throw up your hands and decide to wait until after the holidays?

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