Expectations for Immersion in Publishing

I am going to be working with Kay Hardy Campbell, an independent author who published A Caravan of Brides: A Novel of Saudi Arabia. I started my own indie author odyssey in 2009, and as I looked at the list of items Kay hoped to accomplish with me this term, I marveled over the fact that at different times over the past nine years, I have done nearly everything on her list. The missing component, however, seems to be that I was not doing these activities in a coordinated fashion, but trying this here and that there. I need to develop a plan to incorporate these and other activities into a strategy that will work.

Toward that end, initially I am going to try to develop and implement such a plan for Kay, see what works, what does not work, and evaluate why things worked and did not work. 

I know that I am capable of doing what needs to be done, but the challenge will be to do it in a few hours a week. I have decided to schedule time each morning to get Kay's work done first, before launching into my other daily activities.

The only concern I have is that last semester was such a train wreck for me personally. This is why I am here now, getting this done early, because that was my pattern during my first three semesters in this program. I need to get back into a groove, right the ship, and stay ahead of the game, instead of being in reactive mode all semester. It really made the fall term a semester from hell for me, and I really want to make this semester a more smooth experience. Assuming there are no more hurricanes that I will need to escape from, or surgeries from which to recover, I feel like I should be OK, but being more than OK this term is my 2018 New Year's Resolution.