And counting

Words written today: 895
Words written this month: 5,985
Words written 2017: 136,384
Average words/day 2017: 682
Books completed 2017: 1 (plus 1 novella)
Pages read today: lots of rereading of last weekend’s fun read
Books read 2017: ?
Days until school starts again: 40

Our son said I didn’t have to sound so gleeful about the end of summer. I explained that although I love them dearly and like spending time with them, going to the library and such, I just don’t get as much done. (On the other hand, I’m getting more sleep because I go back to bed after my husband leaves in the morning, as I don’t have to get children out the door and off to school. Sleep is good.)

Seen in our backyard this evening while I worked on dinner:

Back to it

I’ve been really lax about blogging since I got back from vacation. Lax about writing, too, but I’m trying to dig in.

Words written today: 119
Words written this month: 4.470
Words written 2017: 134,869
Average words/day 2017: 681
Books completed 2017: 1 (plus 1 novella)
Pages read today: 0
Books read 2017: 12? 13? I just finished one yesterday, and I’m pretty sure I read one or two around the end of vacation.
Continue reading

Vacation in pictures

Our itinerary:
Pennsylvania to Madison, Wisconsin, overnight stop in Elkhart, Indiana
In Madison for a few days with my mom and younger brother and his fiancée
Madison to Fort Collins, Colorado, overnight stop in Nebraska
In and around Fort Collins for a few days with my in-laws
Fort Collins to Pennsylvania, overnight stops in Lawrence, Kansas, and Lexington, Kentucky

It’s a lot to pack into two weeks, and it was wonderful. (Click through to see pictures up to our arrival in Fort Collins. There are a lot, but even this is just a subset of what I took.) Continue reading

Yesterday 

Lots of driving. Couple stops.

Also lots of reading novellas.

No writing.

striped hairDaughter’s final hair color. (Though shes going to be swimming, so it will fade.)

swan a-swimmingSwan we saw on one of our stops

flowersFrom same stop as the swan

School’s out

Such a busy day. End of school always is, as I take the kids for ice cream and to the comics and gaming store, as well as to the library. Lots of spending time with the kids, recommending things they might enjoy, and realizing just how much they’ve grown over the last year.

Late writing tonight. 547 words though, which is a step in the right direction.

Not a good shot

score cards from laser tag

In addition to lots of copyediting, I played laser tag today. Our friends had a birthday party for their son, and they wanted it to be for families. Rather amusing — our son, our daughter, and I wound up on the blue team, and my husband was on the red. Our daughter was quite indignant about the fact that her dad shot her.

On the blue team, our son was the high scorer two out of the three games. On the red team, my husband was. Me? Well, I scored better than our daughter and her best friend.

But it was a lot of fun. We all enjoyed it, which was the point.

Oh, and I managed to squeeze out 481 words at some point here. We’ll say they were Sunday words.

Now to go grab a few hours sleep before getting kids off to school and starting the last round on this manuscript!

Having a field day

Today, our daughter’s school had their annual field day, and I volunteered to help out. I ran the water balloon toss and the ball relay. It was a great deal of fun, but also fairly tiring standing in the sun that long, so I don’t think I’ll be doing Beach Day on Friday. Part of me would like to, despite having so much work to do, but it’s wiser if I do not.

Also copyedited, wrote back cover copy, and added 108 words to Siren Circle today. All in all, a very good day.

Return of the shoe diva

blue high topsWhen I was younger, I loved shopping for shoes. I could walk into any store, find the cutest things in 6-1/2, and walk out happy. And I frequently did. Any more, not so much.

But this means that when I take my daughter shoe shopping, I am not surprised that she enjoys it. Even when it’s hard to find things in her size. So a chunk of the day was spent finding her new sneakers (which she has to have for gym class) and sandals. I’d say that I envision hours spent in shoe stores when she gets to be a teen, but honestly, I’m pretty sure we’re already spending over an hour on this.

Did get words today, too. Happy with this.

Words written today: 1,783
Words written this month: 3,602
Words written 2017: 100,534
Average words/day 2017: 798 (Yeah, okay, that I’m not happy with)
Books completed 2017: 1
Pages read today: 2 chapters with daughter
Books read 2017: 8

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

Fun day was fun

glow-bowlingThere were some meltdowns on the math fun day, as well as sulking. But mostly, it was good. I might have been a little frustrated at the shopping part. (I would have organized a list of all the prices needed to solve the word problems onto a separate sheet of paper and then moved from one end of the store to the other, gathering the info in a logical order, rather than going back and forth to look up prices in produce then sundries then back to the hot dogs, which are near the produce, etc.) Bowling was when we had a couple of the meltdowns, but also a strike and a few spares in our group, so that was fun. (I apologize for the blurry photo.)

Eventually, I added 633 words for the day, mostly on the new project (because I’m going to try to work on the novella and finish the second technowitch novel at the same time). Better than how I’ve been doing so far this week. Tomorrow, more words. Write all the things!