CAMP

I just spent a wonderful week at church camp counseling 7th grade girls. I had an absolute blast and am so sad it's over! I cannot wait until next year!

Obviously I got zero done in the writing department all week because I was incredibly busy from sun-up to sun-down keeping track of seven girls, leading devotions, playing games, trying to find time for personal Bible study and maybe some sleep (please) too. Despite no writing getting done, this has been the greatest week of my summer so far. :)

I thought you all might like to see a little bit of how my week went, so I'll give you a few pictures to enjoy. :)

Rebekah, preparing her half of the devotions for our girls. (we counseled together this week, which was a blast)

Our girls!

Rebekah got very dirty during the counselor hunt. (I did too, but I didn't get a picture of that)

Devotions

And a random photo with three of our girls. (Not exactly random, it had a purpose...we had a Picture Scavenger Hunt and one of the things to find was something red, hence the picture with my red shirt)

So anyway, that's a small glimpse into the insane and spectacular week that I just had. I had fun with the girls, and I felt stretched by the Lord while counseling throughout the week. (I've been a "counselor" at camp before, but never had to actually do a counseling session til this week, and it was amazing and scary and wonderful all at once)

Now that I'm home I'm going to be diving back into the world of writing. At this point, it's mostly going to be a lot of editing rather than story crafting until I dwindle down my stack of finished but unpublished manuscripts.

Have a lovely day, everyone!

Quarterly Writing Goals #3 [2017]

It's a new month! It's also a new quarter of the year, so it's time to take a quick look at last quarter's goals and make some new ones! :)

I make myself a list of goals related to writing/marketing and such like every quarter of the year to help me stay focused and get everything done that needs doing. And I post it online for accountability and just so I have a place to reference my list.

I actually did remarkably well last quarter, and not only accomplished all my goals, but got ahead on writing as well. My goals were to 1) publish Courageous Heart which I did in fact do. 2) Brainstorm and outline book #3 in my Finding Hope series, which I also did (and more than that, I actually wrote the whole book...so...got a little ahead of myself there). 3) Finish The Tragedy of the Traitor, which I did accomplish. 4) Edit The Tragedy of the Traitor. This one isn't "done" per se, because it's still with my editors, but I got my part done. I gave it to the editors. And 5/6) stay on top of author social media and post weekly author vlogs on YouTube. Both of these started out not so great but by the end of the quarter I was doing great. :)

So that was last quarter. And now for my new goals!

-Edit The Tragedy of the Traitor This will mostly just require patience as I wait for my editors to work through the book and send me their edits.

Publish The Tragedy of the Traitor As soon as I get my edits, this will be done! I'm looking at September 10th being my publication date! *fingers crossed* Hopefully editing won't take too long for that to be true.

-Write Kaelyn this one is already outlined, because again, I got ahead on writing last quarter and got all sorts of things done. So now I'm going to be writing this book this quarter instead of brainstorming/outlining.

-Second Editions I am hoping to go through my previously published works, especially the earliest ones, and fix them up. Some of them have mistakes within the story that I've found, and some of them are missing copyright pages and/or title pages and things of that nature. So I am planning on fixing them all and publishing the second editions this year. Whether that happens this quarter or next I don't care, but I'm putting it down for this quarter. I got so far ahead last quarter that I'm pretty sure I can get most if not all of them done.

Stay on top of author social media  I'm still not quite as consistent with my blog or my author Facebook page as I want to be. So I'll work on it.

Post weekly vlogs I've actually gotten really regular with this! I'm very proud of myself.

So there you go. Those are my goals for July, August, and September! We'll see how much I actually get done. Though judging by last quarter, I'm sure it will be all of them!