Good Laugh and Long Sleep

Obviously the Irish aren’t on a first-name basis with acupuncture, but they are onto something with how restorative sharing a peaceful, sleep-ful weekend at home is.

🙂

It was a long week at work, notwithstanding the fact that I had had Monday off, mostly because it’s taking both of us a lot longer to recover from the Epic Road Trip than either of us expected. So while we had had tentative plans to spend time with family and friends, we were both happy when they got rearranged–even if I am still looking forward to seeing The Martian… next weekend.

We’ve been easing into our return to long walks with the dogs while the weather has crashed head-first into the first cold snap of the season, so we took a few mini-walks, and three of over a mile. Yesterday we finally got over two miles. And are resting our weary selves today. So nowhere near 10 miles this week, but at least we’ve re-started that exercise regimen.

We also enjoyed our stay-at-home nights to catch another episode of Agents of Shield and ELO in concert at Hyde Park. Yes, I might be stuck in the 80s with my musical taste, but I defy anyone not to rock out to “Don’t Bring Me Down.” In fact, that might be my personal anthem for the next few months. Because hubs and I agreed to our own creativity pact: While I have signed up for NaNoWriMo again to see if I can’t finish a story that’s been bugging me more and more in recent days, he will be working on SongoWriMo… his own personal challenge to get music recorded. (Strangely, I read an article this week that claims men are intimidated by women who are smarter or more ambitious than they are. I’m feeling spectacularly lucky hubs is as smart/ambitious as I am, and has always only been supportive of my goals.)

I’ve even continued some productive editing on book 3. I’m still moving much more slowly on this than I hoped, so I’ll need to step it up to get into the NaNo groove, and I’m not sure whether I’ll finish it before I start the next novel, but committing to butt in seat/hands on keyboard for several nights a week is bearing some fruit. I’m even keeping up with my commenting duties… though I just realized I’m now behind on my guest post for ROW80. (Sorry, Kait, I’ll work on that … tomorrow!)

I’m not even really mad that I didn’t write or edit during the many hours freed up by staying home this weekend. I took care of some of those time-consuming tasks that have been hanging over my head for a while: Cleaning Felix’s fish tank; changing our water filters; re-arranging the stones in the yard so they more properly cover the run-off drain; and cooking ahead for the week. If both hubs and I are to give free rein to our creative juices in a few weeks, these things need to be taken care of now. We’ll see whether I get around to writing up book reviews to meet my goals before the NaNo madness hits, otherwise that goal may go out the window. I have a story that is exciting to me, rather than two that have been hanging over my head for a few years waiting for their turn in a long line of reasons to delay writing. I’m hoping the NaNo crazy reignites my story speed so I can finish all the stories I’ve started before the end of the year.

We’ll see.

In publishing news this week, apparently Amazon is in the process of suing individuals on Fiverr who post fake reviews on their site. I hope Amazon will be disabling all those sock-puppet accounts, too, so real reviews once again become more prominent. There was also an interesting article listing a number of traditionally published authors who are taking their writing careers into their own hands and going indie. I certainly appreciate having control over the team that supports me in producing books for public consumption, so I’m half wondering what took all these other authors so long to join the fun.

😉

Meantime, I have two weeks to complete my NaNo ramp-up process and general preparation. Until next week, check out how the other ROW80ers are doing on their progress.