Did you think I fell off the map? It must seem like it as my last “daily blog post” was May 16. How do these things happen? Well… a combination of failing to stick to my “schedule” mixed with a lot of editing work, and extra last-minute tutoring jobs for students preparing for final exams… and all the other unexpected things that make up “life”!

But that isn’t to say that I haven’t been learning and writing. Some of the things I’ve accomplished in the past month and a half (besides all that tutoring and editing!):

• catch up typing from my daily handwritten journal (things I can use for blog posts and other  writing
• Indie Author Fringe webinars (listening and note-taking): How Author Associations Help Your Self-Publishing Career; Book Marketing Begins at Home; Get in Front of Influencers; Freelancing to Pay the Bills; Seven Essentials for Self-Publishing authors; Ten Amazing Tools for Indie Authors
• attend May PWAP (Penticton Writers and Publishers) group meeting and June AGM
• other webinars (listen and note-take): How to Grow Your Email List To Have a Profitable Course Launch; Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing – How to Make the Right Choice for Your Book in 2016; Mail Chimp tutorials; Writers Retreats; Using Blog Posts to Write a Book (Taylor Pearson); Getting Things Done–Productivity (David Allen); Using The One Thing and Time Blocking; Getting Noticed in a Noisy World With Your First Book (Michael Hyatt); radio program on writing memoir; How To Create Online Courses (Teachable); Leverage Your Books to Create an Online Training Program (Thinkific–Greg Smith); Seven Steps to Discover Your Calling (Jeff Goins)
• research blog post articles (read and note-take): 2016 SEO by Brian Dean at Backlinko; information on using Mail Chimp (and then experiment with it–coming soon!); articles on writing good book proposals and synopses; articles on ghost-writing; how to choose WordPress themes; how to change documents from Word to Pages, and vice versa;
• magazine and journal reading from The Malahat Review; Glimmer Train Stories; Faith Today
• Book reading and note-taking: The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns; Keeping a Nature Journal (Leslie/Roth); Guide to Query Letters by Wendy Burt-Thomas; The Heaviness of Things that Float by Jennifer Manuel; Business for Authors by Joanna Penn; and just for fun, a kids’ book: The Lickety-Split Princess by Lynn Manuel
• go through old emails and copy home-school and editing advice I’ve given to clients that I can pass on as useful info to others in my Pen And Paper Mama blog posts; also copy useful advice I’ve given parents of my tutoring students that I can share with others in blog posts
• writing lots of personal emails to friends, writing peers, etc. — I’m an old-fashioned letter-writer! Even wrote some old-fashioned snail mail letters 🙂 And picnics, lunches, coffee times with friends, too
• fun work in my garden 🙂
• attend two different Word Guild seminars in Kelowna: one (on writing and publishing) led by Elsa Schemenauer (prolific educator and author of 75 books) and one (on blogging) by Lester Patrick
• did a lot of walking after our old car broke down–and we had to search for a new one! (well, new-to-us!)
• planning my summer schedule now that tutoring is mostly done until September: big plans for summer: read all the books and articles I’ve been putting on my “wish to read list” — write a first draft manuscript for a book about my First Nation experiences (2000 words per day goal) — write more chapters of my “Summerland Stories” manuscript — write articles for magazines — start blogging regularly!!!

Whew! I had my last tutoring students, and finished 3 rather large tutoring jobs the middle of last week–and pretty much collapsed for a few days.  I’ve been spending lots of time out-of-doors enjoying a rather mild summer (though today is predicted to be 35 Celcius and yesterday was almost that warm), reading, playing with the grandkids at the beach, laying on the lounge chair in the shade with my (very tired) eyes closed and relaxing, listening to CBC radio… and now I’m off to get new tires put on our new-to-us car.  Looking forward to family arriving for summer holidays!