Work-in-progress

A Quiet Busy Month

Lynette M Burrows

December is typically a hectic month. I’m often a last-minute shopper. There are celebrations—three birthdays, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. And it’s a three-in-one business-wise: end of the month, end of the quarter, and end of the year. Yup, tons of statistics, gathering statistics, and reviewing the year. This pandemic year it was a quiet busy month. Making Revising If I Should Die continues. Slowly. But you know what? I’m really pleased with changes I’ve made. Rearranged the order of some scenes and it works well. A first reader said she really enjoyed the story so far. She also made some brilliant suggestions for improvements. Eleven blog posts appeared here. (More to come) I wrote a draft of a newsletter. Now I just need to format it and send it. Managing Every day I record the hours I work on a project or task. And I record word counts.  Every week I review what I’ve accomplished and try to plan for the next week. Sometimes the plan works, other times not so much.  My analysis of this month’s activities revealed a time period that I could use better. And while I’ve only recently changed the way I do things, I […]

I’m Done Eating Turkey

Lynette M Burrows

November has been a month of turkey for me. And I’m not talking about the Thanksgiving kind of turkey. As an introvert, I thought the isolation of self-quarantine wouldn’t bother me. I was wrong. It has. And like one gets after eating turkey, I’ve been lethargic. But now, I’m done eating turkey. It started in October. My focus wasn’t there. Everything took twice as long as usual. And after a while, I wasn’t giving my work, my world, the time it needed. I didn’t have the energy or the desire to work hard. Making If I Should Die is still in revision. I’m making progress, but only reached half of my goal. Read the blurb and more about this novel. Or watch me read a chapter on YouTube. The special project got put on a back burner through inaction. Beyond that, not much has happened in the Making department. Managing Welp. This area fell by the wayside, too. I failed to put out an October newsletter. I’m not sure why the newsletter is the thing I keep “forgetting.” I’m working on getting better about that. Home With a lot of help from my son and his family, we raked leaves out […]

My Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Month

Lynette M Burrows

It’s the last Friday of the month and I owe you a progress report. Perhaps the title of this post gives you a hint? My horrible, no good, very bad month says a lot, and yet not enough. And while I’m an optimist at heart, it got a beating this month. It Started Bad The storm of problems that has become 2020 definitely added to the negative side. But those things aren’t responsible for my horrible month. In July, my oldest and tiniest dog, Astro, had brain damage from a seizure or stroke. You can read more about that in my July Progress Report.  As a result, I carried him down the backyard ramp (we have a raised ranch) many times a day during July and into August. I also just sat and held him a lot. Just as August began, I learned that one of my books was on a pirate site. Investigating further, I learned that the only thing you could do on the site was to enter your credit card information. No other links worked. And there was no information available at any of the Whois type of sites. So, I let it go. Thieves will be […]