Not sure I feel comfortable writing about my running this week, since I didn’t run.  Squeezed in 10 miles yesterday, but went Monday through Friday without getting in any miles period.  I like my job.  Being a product manager is always interesting, and cyber security is just plain cool.  But 13 hour days all week is bullshit.  I have hobbies to feed.  Hope this week was an anomaly.

I went twenty years without any hobbies.  Raising kids and chasing a career.  I suspect I’m similar to others my age.  Daughter number one has graduated college and daughter number two is pretty self reliant.  I’ve got some time back.  I’ve been reacquainting myself with living a life since I got back into running.  I picked up blogging about the same time.  These are my new hobbies.  Reading is something I’ve always maintained.

To take my writing diversion to the next level, I started to write a novel in March.  I expect to finish the story in another month or two.  At least a draft.  Considering I was up this morning at 5:30 am writing, end of summer is a realistic expectation.  There will be editing.  I oftentimes spend an order of magnitude more time editing my blog than writing it, so hard to say how long editing 300 pages will take.  I have this notion that I’ll simply enlist my friends and neighbors to edit it for me.  They all read and I doubt they have much else going on this summer.

In lieu of enlisting free editors, I signed up for a writing conference with the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers in Denver.  The three day conference is chock full of sessions on both writing techniques and how to publish.  I could use help with character development, so I’ve signed up for that.  I didn’t sign up for the sessions where you present the first ten pages of your novel to agents to critique.  I’d be embarrassed to let an agent see my first draft.  I’m hoping to leverage the courses to make a better second draft.  But I’ll talk to agents while I’m there, and learn the process.  I’m not interested in self publishing, that’s what my blog is.  I don’t expect to write a best seller, okay maybe I fantasize about it, but I just want to publish a book.  That will be plenty satisfying.