[Error: unknown template qotd]The biggest influence in making me a better writer has been finding people to partner with.  I have a group of friends on LiveJournal who are all writers, and we formed a closed, friends-only community to share our work with each other, provide critiques, share inspiration, and challenge each other.  More than anything, these people make me strive for excellence and productivity, and their critique of my work only makes it better.  They are able to point out my strengths and weaknesses, and I am able to do the same for them.  Often they will spot a flaw or hole in a story that had completely escaped me.  Their assistance over the past year has been invaluable, and I will always be grateful to them.

After a visit from author Colleen Coble at my library this weekend, I've joined American Christian Fiction Writers. Unfortunately the site doesn't seem to be loading this morning, but I did get an email from them telling them my application had been accepted, so hopefully this week I'll be spending some time exploring the members-only sections. My braces come off this week and I'm having oral surgery to begin the last phase of fixing my teeth, so I should have some down time.

I've been looking at The Loyalty Factor again, partly at slightlyjillian's urging. I'm going to set myself a fairly easy goal for right now: 5,000 words a week. It doesn't seem like much, considering during NaNoWriMo I sometimes write as much in a single day. But since I'm stuck working full-time at the moment, I figure it's a good way to ease myself back into disciplined writing.