For the first time in a long, long, long time, I finished work late Friday afternoon.
And then I had a choice.
I could start catching up on some other work, or I could stop.
At that point, Timothy asked if I wanted to accompany him on an errand and get some coffee.
And so, I chose "stop."
Furthermore, I didn't pick work back up until Sunday afternoon.
These next thoughts are a little all over the place, but I'm going somewhere with it.
I spent the evening with my Gloria Jean coffee and finished reading (and marking errors) in the fourth installment of Before the Blood and uploading the manuscript for KDP approval.
The next morning, I met with Colleen Robbins, my editor for the fifth installment of Before the Blood. This went faster than I anticipated, for this last book was cleaner than I thought.
I then went home and spent twelve straight hours correcting typos, rewriting less than a handful of changes, and doing the basic formatting.
On Sunday, I worked on Phyllis' memoir for a couple hours before switching to work.
Later in the evening, I sat with Timothy while he fiddled with the basic setup of Dalton's Dry Good (the store page, which he's completely redesigning, along with the rest of the BryonySeries website).
I also watched the first episode of the web series Doom Patrol, which Daniel recommended because he said, "the writing is good." A couple trite and predictable moments, but overall promising. I'm looking forward to the second episode.
I feel rejuvenated and only slightly behind this morning, not a bad way to start a work week.
Next weekend's plans for the long weekend are just as slim: finish the memoir, read through the fifth installment of BTB (and hopefully upload it to KDP and send for a proof), and watch a movie: What We Do in the Shadows, which was recommended to me.
A couple noteworthy points:
I posted this article on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2YI7SsT. Although it's about reading, this particular passage also sums up why I enjoy writing fiction so much - and why not spending some time doing so makes me tense.
Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers.
Features writing, and working on Phyllis' memoir, does something similar, but since most of that writing is on deadline, the "trance-like state" is a little less since I'm watching the clock, and I'm relying less on my imagination and more on the facts.
The other point concerns Timothy and the website. I watched him for about an hour as he worked his way through his own creative process, which included a lot of ideas, starting in a certain direction, working his way through a series of steps, and then modifying or scrapping altogether.
As I watched him, I realized every technique he was trying was made with skills he's learned on his own ever since he "adopted" the BryonySeries website as his project.
He's gone from wanting to "clean up the site" a bit to overhauling it and hand-building many of its aspects to make each page engaging (my goal from the start) and less templated.
He's looked at many sites (and pulled up examples) of major companies, authors, and publishing houses, showed me how the pages were built, and then explained the components that make mine different, both on desktop and mobile.
"Where did you learn how to do all this?"
"I read," he said.
I'm amazed at the techniques he's learned by asking questions I didn't know how to ask. He explained edges, shadows, shapes, animation, codes for color creation, etc.
Timothy has taken the lifelong, independent learner goal I had for homeschooling, caught the fire I have for this BryonySeries project, and made it his own own innovative passion.
It was amazing to observe, sort of like watching a sunrise.
For instance, this page, the calendar of events, is gorgeous on a desktop. https://www.bryonyseries.com/fetes-and-feasts. It's not done yet, and mobile views have to be adjusted.
But Timothy also showed me the mobile view by scrolling through it very fast and watching how each card moves like a pack of cards through the scroll.
Each component of each piece (even though each piece looks like one piece) is hand-built by Timothy from other tiny components.
What an amazing weekend from start to finish.
And then I had a choice.
I could start catching up on some other work, or I could stop.
At that point, Timothy asked if I wanted to accompany him on an errand and get some coffee.
And so, I chose "stop."
Furthermore, I didn't pick work back up until Sunday afternoon.
These next thoughts are a little all over the place, but I'm going somewhere with it.
I spent the evening with my Gloria Jean coffee and finished reading (and marking errors) in the fourth installment of Before the Blood and uploading the manuscript for KDP approval.
The next morning, I met with Colleen Robbins, my editor for the fifth installment of Before the Blood. This went faster than I anticipated, for this last book was cleaner than I thought.
I then went home and spent twelve straight hours correcting typos, rewriting less than a handful of changes, and doing the basic formatting.
On Sunday, I worked on Phyllis' memoir for a couple hours before switching to work.
Later in the evening, I sat with Timothy while he fiddled with the basic setup of Dalton's Dry Good (the store page, which he's completely redesigning, along with the rest of the BryonySeries website).
I also watched the first episode of the web series Doom Patrol, which Daniel recommended because he said, "the writing is good." A couple trite and predictable moments, but overall promising. I'm looking forward to the second episode.
I feel rejuvenated and only slightly behind this morning, not a bad way to start a work week.
Next weekend's plans for the long weekend are just as slim: finish the memoir, read through the fifth installment of BTB (and hopefully upload it to KDP and send for a proof), and watch a movie: What We Do in the Shadows, which was recommended to me.
A couple noteworthy points:
I posted this article on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2YI7SsT. Although it's about reading, this particular passage also sums up why I enjoy writing fiction so much - and why not spending some time doing so makes me tense.
Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers.
Features writing, and working on Phyllis' memoir, does something similar, but since most of that writing is on deadline, the "trance-like state" is a little less since I'm watching the clock, and I'm relying less on my imagination and more on the facts.
The other point concerns Timothy and the website. I watched him for about an hour as he worked his way through his own creative process, which included a lot of ideas, starting in a certain direction, working his way through a series of steps, and then modifying or scrapping altogether.
As I watched him, I realized every technique he was trying was made with skills he's learned on his own ever since he "adopted" the BryonySeries website as his project.
He's gone from wanting to "clean up the site" a bit to overhauling it and hand-building many of its aspects to make each page engaging (my goal from the start) and less templated.
He's looked at many sites (and pulled up examples) of major companies, authors, and publishing houses, showed me how the pages were built, and then explained the components that make mine different, both on desktop and mobile.
"Where did you learn how to do all this?"
"I read," he said.
I'm amazed at the techniques he's learned by asking questions I didn't know how to ask. He explained edges, shadows, shapes, animation, codes for color creation, etc.
Timothy has taken the lifelong, independent learner goal I had for homeschooling, caught the fire I have for this BryonySeries project, and made it his own own innovative passion.
It was amazing to observe, sort of like watching a sunrise.
For instance, this page, the calendar of events, is gorgeous on a desktop. https://www.bryonyseries.com/fetes-and-feasts. It's not done yet, and mobile views have to be adjusted.
But Timothy also showed me the mobile view by scrolling through it very fast and watching how each card moves like a pack of cards through the scroll.
Each component of each piece (even though each piece looks like one piece) is hand-built by Timothy from other tiny components.
What an amazing weekend from start to finish.
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