Monthly Archives: May 2016

My retreat was fantastic! A terrific group of women, lots of learning, deep insights, mapping out plans for the rest of the year, laughter and inspiration. I left feeling very empowered. The picture is of the Tarot card I received there – “Seeing the True You.” That makes sense. I’m finally feeling like a Real Biz Owner and author-entrepreneur.

I haven’t written any new words since I last updated you, well, except in my journal. I’ve had lots of wonderful nature time this weekend, and good exercise. I’ve been making plans and getting ready to implement them. I’m feeling excited.

Oh, and something very cool – several of the women at the retreat are interested in forming a smaller group for those of us working on writing projects as part of our businesses. There will probably be about 6 of us in the sub-group, and a few folks have also offered to serve as beta readers. So that’s awesome!

Here are my mini-goals for this coming week:

• Work on my Heart of the Goddess book draft four out of five weekdays.
• Set up a timeline for a new biz project and run it by my coach.
• Find a partner to host our September workshop in NYC.
• Listen to live and recorded calls for my biz coaching program and do my homework.

I hope your week is fun and productive. Blessings!

Hi, I’m back! And I’m ready to retreat – not in the military sense, but I’m actually attending a retreat tomorrow. I’m so thrilled about it! It’s part of my coaching course. The last retreat I went to with these women was life-changing, and now I’m that much further along in my learning, so I’m very excited to see what I come away with after the next two days. Plus, even though the retreat is only 40 minutes away, I decided to stay over at the hotel (there are several women coming in from out of state) and treat myself a true mini-getaway.

Book writing has been going slowly – I had such a busy week last week that I didn’t get to it at all. I worked for my “bridge job” (part-time work not related to my callings) three days out of five. On Thursday we went back to the homeschool co-op we used to be part of, to help our friend with the final quest for Camp Half-Blood, a class based on Greek mythology and the Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief books. It was fun – the picture shows some of the “gold” coins the kids made. It was really good to see everyone. But that left one day for writing, and I wasn’t feeling well that day – there’s a lot of pollen around, and my allergies were acting up.

I’m back on track with working on the draft now (with a short break for the retreat), and I’m currently at 32,755 words. That means I’ve written 2,589 new words so far this week. Not bad.

Blogging is going well. I just sent in my Kind Over Matter post for June, and both my biz blog and personal blog are up to date.  We did our workshop, and while we only had two participants (again – still working on getting the word out better), they both really loved it. So now we have another workshop ready to offer again in the future, as we expand our community. I’m up to date with my coaching course and ready to go rock the retreat!

I’m not even gonna mention the quitting sugar thing, except to say that it just hasn’t happened yet. It’s still on my list of goals, though.

Have a lovely week and do lots of fun creative work!

I don’t even really know how I’m doing towards my goals. Some days I feel scattered and unorganized, other days I’m off adventuring with no regard for my lists (like last Wednesday, when I didn’t remember to check in here), and on yet others I’m focused and on task. The hopeful thing is that I feel really excited about my current work in progress, and I’m one-quarter of the way through the first draft. After this week I’m at 30,166 words, on the way to around 120K total.

This week I finished reading Iterate & Optimize by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant (excellent and highly recommended) and read How I Write: Secrets of a Best-Selling Author by Janet Evanovich (quite interesting, though it’s ten years old and the info about publishing is way out of date). I’ve lagged behind a bit on my blogging goals due to going out to play in the nice weather, though I did take a bunch of new photos while I’ve been out and about. I cleaned my room today and did some more de-cluttering.

I’ve been keeping up with most of the tasks on last Sunday’s mini-goals list – except for that pesky sugar thing. I hope to quit again this week. Sugar is the true gateway drug (just kidding). Anyway, I guess I’ll keep this short and sweet (sweet, get it?).

Here’s my mini-goals list for this week:

• Work on my Heart of the Goddess book draft every weekday.
• Finish preparing for this weekend’s workshop.
• Get back on track with blogging.
• Give up sugar again. (Note to self: You can do it!)
• Listen to live and recorded calls for my biz coaching program and do my homework.

Happy Mother’s Day to those of you who are Moms of any stripe! I’ve been enjoying some fun family time today with my kids and extended family. I also got to take a nap, which was helpful since I stayed up late last night watching Captain America: Civil War at the movie theater. No spoilers here, but I’ll just say it’s a fantastic movie, if you’re into that whole Marvel thing. Which I am.

I only wrote three days out of my intended five this week, but I added a weekly total of 4868 words, which is not too shabby. I’m 92 percent of the way through reading Iterate & Optimize, and I’ll finish it up this week. I purchased a self-study course called 100 Review Book Launch, and I’m excited to start it.

The copy is ready for our next workshop, and we’ve started publicizing it. Blogging is pretty well on track, and I’ve still been keeping up with my biz coaching course work. All is well in my creative world.

Here are my mini-goals for the week:

• Work on my Heart of the Goddess book draft every weekday.
• Continue promoting the workshop.
• Revise and make new plans for Feline Dreamers and set priorities for next steps.
• Give up sugar again. (Note to self: Yes, for real! This means me!)
• Listen to live and recorded calls for my biz coaching program.

Have a fantastic week full of writing and playfulness!

This week has been going well so far, in terms of writing and other projects. It’s been sort of grey and rainy, which makes me feel like staying in and working on my book. I’ve added this hiking picture because I feel like I haven’t been getting as much outdoor time this week as I’d like, though. Inspiration!

Speaking of inspiration, here are this week’s celebrations so far:

• I’ve added 3,583 new words to the Heart of the Goddess book this week, for a grand total of 25,288 out of 120K or so. Getting there!
• I’m 82 percent of the way through reading Iterate & Optimize, and I’m learning a lot.
• Tonight I attended an AWESOME event that is all about cool women entrepreneurs hanging out, networking, and making friends. It was my first time; my biz coach invited me. I loved it SO much and I’m thankful it’s a monthly event.
• Listened to a recording for my biz coaching program and took lots of notes.
• I’m so thankful for my lovely menfolk, who are my muses and inspire me every day.
• Blogging is on track and going well.
• BlackLion and I had some cool new ideas for our newsletter and blog, which we’ll be implementing soon.

That’s all for now. Hope the rest of your week goes swimmingly!

I had quite a busy week. I’m a Pagan, and this is a holiday week for me and my clan. Today we spent time dancing around (and drumming for) the maypoles at the beach, enjoying a huge community potluck, and laughing with friends. Mayday, or Beltane, is about celebrating the fertility of spring and nature becoming green and lovely again. Of course, this is Maine, and it was actually kind of cold on the beach today. But that didn’t stop us from having a lovely time!

This week I also went to the beach with a friend who is moving away. We had a picnic and a fun walk. And I drove up north a couple of hours to visit with some other dear friends. With all that adventure, I’m surprised I had time for any writing.

But I did! I completed my monthly post for Kind Over Matter, wrote 4433 new words for the Heart of the Goddess draft, wrote a blog post for Feline Dreamers, worked at my bridge job, and kept up with my coaching course. I’m at 74 percent of the way through Iterate & Optimize, which isn’t much further than last time, but that’s okay.

I’ve been exercising a lot, though I’ve also been eating sugar recently and need to ditch it again and get back on track.

Overall, life is going well and I’m excited about my creative projects. This week I have more time to work on stuff (um, hopefully!), as my schedule isn’t quite so dang full.

Here are my mini-goals for the week:

• Work on my Heart of the Goddess book draft every weekday.
• Write copy and content for our next Feline Dreamers workshop (on 5/21), and publicize it.
• Give up sugar again.
• Listen to live and recorded calls for my biz coaching program.

Have a fun week and get outdoors in the lovely spring world (or fall crispness, depending on where you live)!