I'm Calling this Round a Success

Is today the end of the Round or do I have a few more days? I can never remember how this works, but I am sending you my final figures for the Round anyway.  Things I accomplished are highlighted in green, things I came close on are in yellow, and my failures are written in red.  I just have way too much fun with color.

I. READING

A. Weekly goal

1. Read my assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor.  I think I did this.

2. Read ten hours a week in one of the books I am reading.  I have been reading lots so I would have to say yes.   

B. Goals for the Round                           

1. Have finished reading five books.  I have finished five actual books, “The Boy at the Museum”, “Years of Stone”, “Sell Your Book Like Wildfire”, “The Two-Edged Sword” and “God Called – He Needs Your Decision”, plus  the manuscript of that friend of a friend.

II. WRITING

A. Weekly goal

1. Work on my novel, “Tale of an American Woman”. I finished chapter 33. This seems to be as good as it gets.

2. Edit “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”, the second book in the Bible Stories in 40 Days series. Finished!

 3. Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, The Dino Chronicles. Yes, I blogged on schedule.  

B. Goals for the Round.  

1. Have finished the first round of edits for “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”. Finished!

2. Start editing my novel.   I know that I should probably finish it first, but this goal seems to be hanging out there like an ingrown toenail.   

3. After reading that manuscript of a friend of a friend (I should give it a title, huh?), write a critique of it. I wrote a one page critique and rewrote two pages of her manuscript to give her an idea of some of the changes this thing needs. I met with her this week, spent an hour giving her feedback. I hope I helped her and she doesn’t give up on her dream of getting her story published.

III. REACHING

A.      Weekly goal.

1. Promote either one of my books on one other site or in person. Boy, I don’t remember doing this at all. Shoot.

2. Comment on my assigned blogs for ROW80. I think I did this.   

3. Research markets for an hour. Actually I did drag out my 2012 Christian Writer’s Market Guide and checked out a few markets. The only reason I did was because I was once again rebooting my laptop and couldn’t just sit here watching it do its thing. I think a goal for the new year needs to get getting a new laptop.

4. Walk several streets of town, taking pictures and blogging about it.  I walked a few streets on Friday and on Wednesday when I stopped at the old hospital, I got some wonderful news. Two girls from our church were there salvaging the old marble and other cool stuff from the oldest section of the hospital. One of the girls is doing this for her girl scout Gold Award. She plans to build a memorial garden using as many things from the old building as she can and possibly selling bricks to raise money for her project. I was overjoyed to hear this, as that old section is the part of the building which remains dear to my heart.

B. Goals for the Round

1. Have submitted three pieces somewhere. Yes, I submitted pieces to Splickety Love, Guidepost magazine and a Poetry Challenge.  

2. Have sent a copy of “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days” to my clergy-friends for their input. Yes.  

3. Have finished walking every street in my town.  I think this goal may have to remain open-ended for now.

IV. PERSONAL

A. Nonprofit – Tumaini Volunteers – We are having a meeting today to work on the Business Plan, elect officers and assign an Audit Committee. That all sounds very productive!

B. Sewing -- Finish one project this Round. Yes! Have sewn two things.

C. Church –

1. Get addresses for our college kids and find them all mentors.  Cheating or not, I am saying this goal is complete. I have addresses for eight of my nine students and all of those have mentors.Yes!

2. Write our children’s Christmas program. (Since this is a brand-new goal, I can hardly mark it in red yet.) I talked to our Sunday School teacher last night, and she only has five kids in class right now. How abysmal is that. I’m not yet going to despair as we still have ten confirmation kids to pull from as well as our high schoolers. I will start work on the program in the next few weeks, keeping in mind the low numbers and need for simplicity. I will not give up on our kids.

I now need to start working on tweaking these goals for next Round and the end of the year. Hard to believe that is only three months away. And so much to do yet!

How about you? Are you satisfied with what goals you accomplished this Round or are you still pushing to get those last few things done? Or have you just plain scraped a bunch of stuff? Whatever has been going on in your world, I think the best thing is to still have goals, if you don’t get them done at least you thought about them. (Kind of like dieting, right?) 

 Callie and Cassie hard at work.

 The original entrance of the old hospital.

Salvaged arch from the entryway. Cool stuff. 

Out of the Blue

Here is it ten o’clock Wednesday night and I am just now starting to blog. And I have a meeting at seven in the morning. Why am I not in bed?

I can’t think of anything I have honestly done since Sunday. Oh, I think I finished the next chapter in my novel and still have two to go, at least. I am beginning to drag this out. Maybe I will end up with 40 chapters after all.

I have another address and another mentor for my church’s college kids. I also wrote to my Compassion Kid in Kenya. I have really been slacking on that. I posted another item on the Esty store of our nonprofit. I finished my critique of the memoir of the friend of the friend and am meeting with her tomorrow night. I hope it goes well; I don’t want to offend her. Totally out of the blue, I met her daughter today. After we talked a minute, she goes, “Did you write two books?” I answered, “yes”, and started into my sales pitch. That’s when she told me that I had just read her mom’s book. She was sure that her mom just wants any kind of feedback she can get and that I won’t hurt her feelings if I am critical.

I hope to get a lot done on Friday, but my day off is starting to fill up already. Figures. And I work the day job Saturday morning, and am going to spend the day Sunday working on the nonprofit with my daughter and the rest of our board. 

Not seeing much end in sight. And only a week left in the Round!

But lots of thing can happen totally out of the blue.

That's How It Goes.

Not quite as impressive this week, but I am still plowing ahead.

I. READING

A. Weekly goal

1. Read my assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor.  I think I did this.

2. Read ten hours a week in one of the books I am reading.  Let’s just say, yes.  

B. Goals for the Round                           

1. Have finished reading five books.  I have finished four actual books, but I also did finish the manuscript of that friend of a friend. I don’t know how many words it was, but it is in a two and a half inch ring binder, so I’m counting it.

II. WRITING

A. Weekly goal

1. Work on my novel, “Tale of an American Woman”. Started chapter 33. I really need to stop being distracted and just finish it!!!

2. Edit “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”, the second book in the Bible Stories in 40 Days series. Finished! And this week I did contact my publisher and he is excited to see it as soon as it is really ready.

 3. Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, The Dino Chronicles. Yes, I blogged on schedule.  

B. Goals for the Round.  

1. Have finished the first round of edits for “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”. Finished!

2. Start editing my novel.   I don’t know how I will get this done, but I am not going to despair yet.  

3. After reading that manuscript of a friend of a friend (I should give it a title, huh?), write a critique of it. This is not the only brand-new goal that I added just this week, but this one I actually did. I wrote a one page evaluation of it and re-wrote a two-page section to give the author an idea of what editing she needs to have done on this thing.

III. REACHING

A.      Weekly goal.

1. Promote either one of my books on one other site or in person. I personally talked to three women this week about my books, telling them where they are for sale and offering to get them a personal copy. I also emailed five friends to tell them I am working on the second devotional in the series and that it would help that second book if I had some more reviews of the first one. All five of them got back to me that they are on it. I think that is a good percentage.

2. Comment on my assigned blogs for ROW80. I think I did this.   

3. Research markets for an hour. No, not really.  

4. Walk several streets of town, taking pictures and blogging about it.  Umm, I don’t think I walked at all. Right now I am obsessed with the tearing down of our old hospital, so I walked around those two city blocks four times.

B. Goals for the Round

1. Have submitted three pieces somewhere. Yes, I submitted my third piece to Splickety Love and heard back within two days that they rejected it. On the upside, I heard from an online magazine that I sent a piece to in March and they wanted to let me know that they have sent my piece to some committee for consideration, so I can at least take that article off the rejection list and put it back on the still-waiting list.

2. Have sent a copy of “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days” to my clergy-friends for their input. Yes, it is in the hands of three of them.

3. Have finished walking every street in my town.  The weather last week was abysmal, but the forecast for next week is looking better. I am going to keep going and see what I can get done before it snows.

IV. PERSONAL

A. Nonprofit – Tumaini Volunteers – First of all, you have heard we have been granted tax-exempt status. Which is the tip of the iceberg. Our new immediate goal is to write a business plan which we can present to potential large donors. We are having a meeting next Sunday to work on that.

B. Sewing -- Finish one project this Round. Yes! Have sewn two things.

C. Church –

1. Get addresses for our college kids and find them all mentors.  No change here, but I still am doing better than other years.

2. Write our children’s Christmas program. I know, who does this? With one week to go in the Round, I added another new goal. I know this won’t happen this Round, but I wanted to write it down so that I wouldn’t forget it for next Round.

And that is how my life goes. Basically around in circles. But what’s a girl to do?

 My biggest distraction of the summer. This was the ER entrance of the old hospital in my town, as it looked in July.

 Here it is as of last Thursday. Needing some emergency services itself. 

Short and rather useless

Wednesday still comes up way too fast. Monday I didn’t get home from the day job until 7:30 and I had one lousy day. I sucked it up, went online and actually did some marketing. I still hope to publish my second devotional this fall, so thought I should push the first one a little bit. I emailed some of my friends and bugged them about writing reviews of it for me. Several admitted that they didn’t own a copy of it yet (what kind of friends are those??), so I popped copies of the book in the mail to them on Tuesday.

Tuesday night my daughter and her fiancé came up and we took them out for Chinese. (Num!) Then she and I spent the rest of the night looking up wedding ideas on Pinterest. I know, not something I usually waste my time with, but a mom’s got to do what a mom’s got to do.

And tonight is Wednesday. It is cold out (43 degrees Fahrenheit!!) and has been raining most of the day. (We had two and three-quarters inches in the rain gauge.) This weekend is the Fall Ride motorcycle rally in my town, so I have two motorcycle trailers parked in my yard. (It’s a long story (and I don’t even know why I mentioned this.).)

I am feeling that I have overused the parentheses, so I think I will cut this post short and wish you all a good night. 

Adding Purple to my Green and Yellow

I. READING

A. Weekly goal

1. Read my assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor.  I think I did this.

2. Read ten hours a week in one of the books I am reading.  I’m reading “Crooked Lines” by Holly Michael, “God Called . . . He Need Your Decision” by Randy Kirk, and “Battlefield of the Mind” by Joyce Meyer, as well as that manuscript of a friend of a friend. I would say there was ten hours spent in all of those books this week

B. Goals for the Round                           

1. Have finished reading five books.  I am still at four.  “The Boy at the Museum”, “Years of Stone”, “Sell Your Book Like Wildfire”, and “The Two-Edged Sword”.    

II. WRITING

A. Weekly goal

1. Work on my novel, “Tale of an American Woman”. Wrote chapter 32, which went well, but led me to add another chapter.  

2. Edit “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”, the second book in the Bible Stories in 40 Days series. Finished!

 3. Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, The Dino Chronicles. I blogged here twice and four times in the Dino Chronicles, which wins me a green highlight.  

B. Goals for the Round.  

1. Have finished the first round of edits for “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”. Finished!

2. Start editing my novel.   I still might get this started in the next two weeks.

III. REACHING

A.      Weekly goal.

1. Promote either one of my books on one other site or in person. Umm, I somehow need to make this a more concrete goal by next Round. I have been neglecting all my social media except for Facebook, so I did do some outreach on LinkedIn and Good Reads. I also took my two books into another store in town to sell on consignment. The store owner knows me and so she goes, “I was wondering when you were going to bring your books in.” A good sign, I guess.

2. Comment on my assigned blogs for ROW80. I think I did this.   

3. Research markets for an hour. Yes, I did. See B1 below.

4. Walk several streets of town, taking pictures and blogging about it.  Walked only twice, but am still ahead of myself on the blogging circuit.

B. Goals for the Round

1. Have submitted three pieces somewhere. Here we go. I submitted my third piece for the Round, sending the flash fiction story, “The Perfect Height”, to Splickety Love. I know, as if I have ever written a love story ever in my entire life. But this one is kind of cute. I hope they like it.  

2. Have sent a copy of “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days” to my clergy-friends for their input. Yes, I did this and my dear husband even read it and gave it a glowing review, as if he would give me less than a glowing review.

3. Have finished walking every street in my town.  So, since I decided that I am just not going to get this in yet this fall, I have plotted out in my head four or five remaining areas, so that is my goal for the year, not necessarily the Round. 

IV. PERSONAL

A. Nonprofit – Tumaini Volunteers – Ok, so this is the goal that has me completely blown away. Like blown away into the next century! My daughter called Friday afternoon and said she had some exciting news. She followed that statement with what they call a pregnant pause and now I know why they call it that. I was sure the excitement she felt was not going to be such to this woman who has no intention of ever being a grandma. But luckily the daughter finally burst out that she had just gotten off the phone with the IRS and they have granted our non-profit tax exempt status. I never, ever in a million years thought it would be that easy. We were all sure that it would take at least a couple rounds of forms being filled out before they deemed us worthy. The IRS woman told Val that the official letter would be coming within two weeks, so we both decided we wouldn’t get excited and announce it until we had the letter in our hot little hands. On her way to work that night, Val stopped at the post office box and - this is the part you will not believe – there was the official letter from the IRS. Sweet Lord above, can you even believe it!! Much excitement now! Much, much bigtime excitement! (That was way too much green, so I had to throw in some purple!)

B. Sewing -- Finish one project this Round. Yes! Sewed one dress and last night finished sewing a book bag for my writer group. Once again, ahead of the game!

C. Church – Get addresses for our college kids and find them all mentors.  We have nine college students, I have addresses for seven and mentors for five. This is really good and qualifies for yellow.  

And I don’t believe I told you about the latest with my stupid dog. So last week I posted his ALS ice bucket challenge. I got home from work on Tuesday and his vet had left a message. The stupid dog had won their pet photo contest for last month. What is up with that! The dog has more fans than I do! 

(No pictures of the dog this week, just the book bag I sewed.)

So close and yet so far away.

Holy cow, how did September jump onto the docket? Here in Northern Wisconsin, I am still waiting for summer to start. I think I will be waiting for a lonnngg time.

Labor Day, with only the living room to clean and some laundry to wash, along with the usual crummy weather, I was fired up to finish my novel. Just two last chapters, I’ve been telling myself now for months. But this is why I am not a plotter. I wrote what I had hoped would be my second to the last chapter, and my darn main character went crazy again and off on some tangent and then God sent her a premonition, which is a good lead-in to the next chapter, but that means the next chapter is still not going to be the last chapter. I just don’t get how other novelists do it. Maybe I need to take a class. Or just get a handle on my characters!

Here is part of that scene. I know I haven’t shared anything about the story, coz there are some big twists and turns, and hopefully surprises which I don’t want to ruin. The premise of this scene is simple though. The main character Jenny and her husband are staying in a church in Nairobi, Kenya. They have embarked on their first ever mission trip and have spent two days visiting a slum and an orphanage. In the morning they are leaving for the Bush. This scene takes place on August 6, 1998. I don’t want to ruin it for everyone, but if that date means something to you – shh, keep it a secret.

“Do you think we are doing the right thing?”

            “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. I know we prayed about this, but do you think this is where God wants us to be? Do you think He really wanted us to drag these other people here?”

            Paul raised himself up on his elbow and studied her face. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. I’m just suddenly scared. I feel like we shouldn’t have come, like we aren’t safe anymore.”

            “Is it all of John’s talk about crime in the slums? Or hearing all the sad stories from the orphans?”

She shook her head, staring up at the ceiling. Water stains darkened the patched drywall. The room was adequate, though it was small, musty and lacked a window. But there was something outside the walls of this building, something beyond this Christian compound. As if an insignificant virus had started to march down the street of the neighborhood outside, a disease that wormed its way into the lives of those who were not aware.

She studied the water spots on the ceiling. Before her very eyes, she thought she could see them spread.

Mathare Slum, Nairobi, Kenya, when I was there in 2006.