not a rock star

 I knew I wasn’t going to be a rock star this past week, but I really thought I would be able to get something done. But alas, I didn’t accomplish much. Yes, we still had a lot going on with my mother-in-law’s estate, but really? The only thing that I truly had no control over is that it was snowy much of the week and never got much above freezing, so we couldn’t get anything done in the yard.

Here’s what little I did get done. Green highlight is goal accomplished, yellow highlight is worked on and red lettering is a failure.

1) My novel, “The Truth Beyond the River.”

a. Promote it somehow. Nope, pretty sure I did not.

2) My WIP, the novel, “Rewrite the Now”.

a. Write three chapters or 4,700 words. Wrote 1,577 words. I have got to pick up the pace!

3) Other writing.

a. Write an entry in my Covert Corona Chronicles. Nope, which is a shame as there is so much to say about it right now.

b. Write two posts on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”.                  Yup.

c. Write a poem, because it is poetry month and I haven’t written any in a long time, and any time I go to a funeral, I come home with thoughts of poems to write in my head. Nope, are you kidding?

4) Other stuff.

a. Work in the yard.

i) finishing raking the yard. Kinda hard to do in the                   snow.

ii) finishing prepping my garden for winter. Again,                    snow.

b. Finishing working at my MIL’s house. Yes, we did as much as we could and called it quits.  

I don’t have any excuses for the upcoming week. I am still exhausted from the last two weeks, but I will start getting caught up on sleep a little every day (I hope). And right now the forecast is for half-way decent weather later in the week, so we better get that yard work done.

1) My novel, “The Truth Beyond the River.”

a. Promote it somehow.  

2) My WIP, the novel, “Rewrite the Now”.

a. Write three chapters or 4,700 words.

3) Other writing.

a. Write an entry in my Covert Corona Chronicles.  

b. Write two posts on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”.

4) Other stuff.

a. Work in the yard.

i) finish raking the yard.  

ii) finish prepping my garden for winter.

b. In addition to lots of other collections, my MIL collected sweatshirts. I brought over fifty of them home with me. I decided to make them into throws, but I need to first wash them all, so I want to wash and prep the first batch. Sounds easy enough, right?   

Looks like baby steps, but that is good enough for now. 

Stay safe and stay healthy.  Chris

(Oh, and if anyone running the show down at Blogger reads this, I still hate the changes you made. I do not want double spacing between my bullet points, but you don't seem to care what I want.)

Hubby and I, at the lake in his home town, the last decent weather day we had

BLEAH!

Bleah! That is all I have to say. Last time I posted here, two weeks ago, I was so full of ambition, setting a daunting goal for myself to finish my WIP novel by the end of the year. I know that NaNoWriMo is coming up and others write a novel in the month of November, but realistically, three months isn’t enough for me. Do those people have a life at all?

But, back to the last two weeks. On October 8, my mother-in-law fell down her basement stairs, breaking her hip. She passed away the next day and her funeral was on the 14^th. My brother-in-law and his wife spent that entire week at our house, I spent four days helping them clean out her house, and I still worked Monday and Tuesday at the day job that week. I cleaned my house yesterday and went shopping the day before. I am so grateful to have today off, as my last bereavement day. I am exhausted.

You may think I am wonder woman, having accomplished anything on this list of goals, but remember, this was from two weeks ago. Surely, I could have gotten more done in that week before the fall. As it is, green highlight is goal accomplished, yellow highlight is worked on and red lettering is a failure.   

1) My novel, “The Truth Beyond the River.”

a. Promote it somehow. I posted on Facebook that I had copies on hand for sale. Four people messaged me, resulting in the sale of four books, with another person promising to purchase it on line.  

2) My WIP, the novel, “Rewrite the Now”.

a. Write three chapters or 4,700 words. Only one chapter at 1,800 words.

b. Do an evening of research for it. Nope.

3) Other writing.

a. Write an entry in my Covert Corona Chronicles. Yes.

b. Write two posts on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”. Posted four times over the two weeks, so yup.

c. Write a poem, because it is poetry month and I haven’t written any in a long time. No. What was I thinking here??

4) Other stuff.

a. Work in the yard.

i) rake the yard. Yes, but not finished.

ii) prep my garden for winter. Yes, but also not finished.

b. Take a walk somewhere other than my yard. Winter will be here soon and I have to get out before it gets too cold. No, lazy me, and there is up to four inches in the forecast for tomorrow night. Yikes!

c. Work on sewing one of my quilts. No, really?

As much as I would like to dive right back in, my brother-in-law and his wife from out of town will be back again this weekend to work on Mom’s house. Ok, I’ll just put this out there – she was somewhat of a hoarder. But I won’t dwell on that here.

Here’s what little I will try to get done this week.

1) My novel, “The Truth Beyond the River.”

a. Promote it somehow.

2) My WIP, the novel, “Rewrite the Now”.

a. Write three chapters or 4,700 words.

3) Other writing.

a. Write an entry in my Covert Corona Chronicles.

b. Write two posts on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”.

c. Write a poem, because it is poetry month and I haven’t written any in a long time, and any time I go to a funeral, I come home with thoughts of poems to write in my head.    

4) Other stuff.

a. Work in the yard.

i) finishing raking the yard.

ii) finishing prepping my garden for winter.

b. Finish working at my MIL’s house.  

Sounds like a lot, considering it is Monday already, but I’ll give it a shot. Stay safe and stay healthy.  Chris 

Hubby and me with his mom at her 80th birthday party 

 

Setting a Daunting Goal for Myself

I just realized the date is ten-four 2020. As in good-bye year which has been over the top horrid.

Anyway, I didn’t post here last week because I was on vacation. I had my laptop and internet and I could have come up with something, but I thought – oh, shoot, let’s just start fresh once October gets here!

Real quick, I had a wonderful vacation with my kids. We rented a cabin about two hours north of where I live, and even though the weather was cool and rainy, we still were outdoors, hiking and exploring, as much as we could. I’m blessed to live where I do and have the awesome kids and husband that I have.

So, here’s what I accomplished since I posted my goals last, two weeks ago. Green highlight is goal accomplished, yellow highlight is worked on and red lettering is a failure.

1) My novel, "The Truth Beyond the River.”

a. Post a blog about it once. Yes.  

b. Post that video I made on YouTube. Yes.    

c. Promote the free e-book version on my social media. Yes. My that seems so long ago already!

2) My WIP, the novel, “Rewrite the Now”.

a. Write three chapters or 4,500 words. Two chapters and 3,441 words. So close.

b. Do an evening of research for it. Hmm? I think I did.   

3) Other writing.

a. Write an entry in my Covert Corona Chronicles. Yes, twice.

b. Write two posts, per week, on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”. Yes. I did.

c. Write a short story to submit to one of the markets I discovered last week.  No and yes. I submitted a story I’d written a few years ago to a new market which I discovered this week. 😊

4) Other stuff.

a. Going to that cabin on the weekend. Yeah! We had a fantastic time and are ready to plan our next family vacation!

Seeing as there is so much green here, and I finally have a handle on my WIP,  and Hubby and I have finished watching the entire "Downton Abbey" series, I am going to set a goal of having finished writing my “Rewrite the Now” novel by the end of the year. I currently have 13,000 words on it, which means, with twelve weeks until the end of December, I need to average 4,700 words a week, or so. Sounds pretty daunting, but I’m going to give it my best shot. I’m thinking that if I can finish writing it by then, self-edit it in January, hire a professional to edit it by spring, I could possibly publish it by mid-summer. We’ll see.   

1) My novel, “The Truth Beyond the River.”

a. Promote it somehow. (How very vague. Argh. ☹)

2) My WIP, the novel, “Rewrite the Now”.

a. Write three chapters or 4,700 words.

b. Do an evening of research for it.

3) Other writing.

a. Write an entry in my Covert Corona Chronicles.

b. Write two posts on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”.

c. Write a poem, because it is poetry month and I haven’t written any in a long time.   

4) Other stuff.

a. Work in the yard.

i) rake the yard.

ii) prep my garden for winter.

b. Take a walk somewhere other than my yard. Winter will be here soon and I have to get out before it gets too cold.

c. Work on sewing one of my quilts.

That sounds like way more than I have energy for this week, so wish me luck! Have a great week yourself, be safe and stay healthy.  Chris