Over the weekend, I continued to go through old journal notes, picking out bits that could be potential writing prompts to develop. But mostly I did a big mystery project over two days using photos and interview stories. I am putting it together with Publisher. And that’s all I’m saying right now! More details when it all comes together 🙂

This morning I spent some more time on “the project,” then had a meeting with an editing client, worked with two tutoring students (and did reports and preps following), and also did my usual Monday admin stuff.

And that’s it! Enough!

The past couple days have been busy!  Thursday we went early to the grocery store to get a good deal on Christmas turkeys and ham. Then home and posted “Tips on Working With an Editor” as well updating my “tutoring topics” page and “editing and writing topics” page on my penandpapermama.com site.

Then on to this site, posting a new header photo (after trying out several), and adding a new section, “Prayers and Meditations,” with 10 posts to start.  I had done the drafts a long time ago but forgot to post them!

After that, drive around town, getting gas, doing business at the Strata office, working with our strata maintenance guy to fix some cameras, and finally coffee with a fellow writer.

I spent much of the afternoon working on editing old journal notes to eventually post on the “Prayers and Meditations” section I set up earlier.  And in the evening, my husband and I went through his childhood snapshots, and labeled them with post-it notes.

Today I wrote a post on My Church Journey site and did more work on editing old journal entries.. I taught 2 tutoring students, and did preps and reports for them, as well as for another student. Finally, I scanned my husband’s childhood pictures, as well as pictures taken at the various logging camps he worked at over the years. I posted an album of them on his Facebook page. The childhood pictures are for a special project!

 A friend was downsizing his family’s book collection recently and asked me if I’d like their copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. On a whim, I said, “Sure!”  I haven’t read it since I was a child, nor have I seen the movie. But I opened it up and started reading. My goodness! It brought back such memories, not just of that story, but of many of the books I read during my childhood–especially books from my grandparents. It really reflected the day and age when they were brought up, and reading Little Women I understood their attitudes and actions so much more clearly–beliefs and values which they passed on to my parents, and they all passed on to me.  Indeed, many of which I also passed on to my children, who are now passing them on to my grandchildren. Some people think our children and grandchildren are kind of old-fashioned, but so many others compliment them on their respectfulness, honesty, caring, helping, work ethic, and beliefs.

Yesterday I spent most of the day doing a variety of short editing jobs. I always enjoy so much reading new material, and trying to help writers refine their work while at the same time respecting and maintaining their personal voices.

Today was mainly taken up with tutoring, catching up email letters, and writing a post at my penandpapermama.com site . . . which I just now remembered I haven’t quite finished. Guess I need to complete it before bedtime!

This weekend was “family time” — wonderful to have the grand-kids sleep over. But sad to lose a precious niece.

Today was a bit of a mix-up, with me feeling so emotional. But I did get my Monday “admin” items completed finally, did my tutoring, lots of tutoring reports and preps, and a wee bit of editing.

Yesterday evening I had fun working through some Gimp tutorials . . . and am looking forward to using what I’ve learned–with some excellent help from Shelby, thank you!–to label the photos on my haidagwaaibuildingbridges.com website to make the posts more easily accessible.

Today I added a post to my “My Church Journey” site; I also added some “Friday Freebie” items on penandpapermama.com — fun “Read and Do” activity suggestions, and two free downloads of reading comprehension activities for some Scooby Doo titles.

I did some tutoring with one of my regular students, as well as spend a couple hours helping out a local young man with his journalism writing skills. He is developing his own local news online site–good for you, Jordan!

I sat in on a live webinar from Verbal to Visual, and used some of the visual note-taking skills I’ve been learning there to write a fun “rebus” type letter to my grand-kids; I’ve also been using visual note-taking sketching to develop learning activities for my young tutoring students.

And my aunt, who I haven’t seen for ages, dropped by to visit for a couple hours. An awesome surprise!

The past couple days I have been focusing on improving my blogs.  One big update was at HaidaGwaiiBuildingBridges.com, where I changed to a different WordPress theme–and while I was at it, discovered that at some point I had written a bunch of draft posts, and totally forgot about them. So I’ve started editing the posts, and digging through my photos for images that work with each post. I’ve been getting tips from various people about how to make the site more accessible, like labeling the pictures which comprise the front page and actually are links to the posts. Since I don’t have any decent graphics software, I’ve been directed to check out Gimp, and now will be on a big learning curve to figure that out.  I’ve wanted for a long time to become more tech-savvy when it comes to graphics, so I’m actually looking forward to this new adventure.

I also did some work on the blog on my PenAndPaperMama.com website.  Unbelievable as it might seem, I never bothered to use categories for my posts, even though the blog covers a variety of topics. What on earth was I thinking (or not thinking!)?  Anyway, I have gone through all my posts, and have created categories for all of them–which are now listed on the sidebar, which should make searching the site much easier. I’ve also put up links to my social media and a “subscribe by email” widget as well. About time.  Oh, and links to my main other websites.  I must have been in a haze when I set up the site!

Oh! In my last post I mentioned I had sent copies of a “letter to the editor” to 3 local newspapers. I’m happy to report I’ve been getting some pretty amazing responses from readers 🙂

It has to be the weather–right? I mean, I really, really need an excuse for not posting my daily update here for 5 days! It’s been cloudy-gray, dull, chilly (below freezing) for days now. How could I do any creative writing in weather like this? Right? Okay, now I feel better 🙂

Actually, I’ve just been busy. Thursday I posted a new item on my HaidaGwaiiBuildingBridges.com site; then went for coffee with one of my writing friends (who inspired me to take a note I wrote on Facebook, and refine and shrink it to send to some of the local papers as a letter to the editor–which I did on Friday; three edits later, with her help, I am pretty pleased with it, and am waiting to see if any of the papers pick it up. I used to write newspaper columns years ago, but haven’t done it for so long that I’ve kind of lost my nerve!). I also spent 3 hours helping a friend prepare a proposal for her Master’s thesis.

Friday started out with writing 9 pages in my journal at 5:30 a.m.  My morning writing plans went astray when one of the people in our complex noticed the trailer hitch on his truck had gone missing overnight; since I am the strata council member with access to the security cameras, we spent time searching for evidence. I also had two tutoring students on Friday.  And went to a book launch to pick up copies of a new anthology which features one of my poems. And proofread the Master’s thesis proposal. Oh, and of course, did that editing of the “letter to the editor” which I already mentioned.

Saturday I attended two workshops at the Okanagan School of the Arts. The first focused on self-publishing, and in particular, how to prepare manuscripts for Print on Demand. The second, also on self-publishing, focused on preparing Word manuscripts for ebooks. Then we had the grand-kids over for some help with their school work.

Sunday really was a “day of rest,” thank goodness! I needed it!

Today, I had 3 tutoring students (plus reports and preps). And being Monday, I did my weekly admin tasks. I also wrote a letter to the kids and grand-kids. I have been working through the book, Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories Into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life Into Literature, by Bill Roorbach. A while back, I did an exercise in which I created a map of my childhood neighborhood (when I was 5 to 7 years of age) from my viewpoint at that age ; today, I started writing stories based on the map. The first story was about my first day of school; I learned some things about myself by thinking about and writing it!

As we are a bit short of cash this Christmas, my husband and I were trying to think of what we could do that would be special for our kids and grand-kids–and we have come up with a great idea that involves us doing some co-writing. I’m not going to say more right now, because it’s a Christmas surprise after all. But we did get started on it today! I’m excited!