Your Update Link: A King’s Command – Part 7

Happy Friday! I, for one, am relieved it’s the weekend. This was a very long week, LOL, even though I had off on Monday and was remote teaching today. I had my nieces with me today because my sister is out of town, and I am so glad I didn’t have to juggle teaching and homeschooling these last six months. I was in meetings and in classes, and they kept trying to kill each other. They’re with my parents for the rest of the weekend, and I am LOCKING my door for the next two days.

Sorry for completely disappearing this week, both on the site and on Twitter. I really just kind of needed to clear my mind and concentrate on other things, particularly my job and my course content. I’m still writing the course content and creating the digital content which is fun and mentally exhausting. I really want to do the best job I can so that if there’s a place for me next year, they’ll keep me. Right now, it’s a one year contract, but it’d be great to be back.

I was writing all week — I made time on Tuesday and Wednesday to write, and finished Chapter Three of Fool Me Twice. I’m definitely staying on track there — I’m at about 17k, and the Pacemaker Word Count plan suggests I be at 8900k this week — so I’ve nearly doubled my pace. This makes it easier for me to skip a day here or there when things get tough because I don’t lose any morale. I think I’ve said this before — but using the “start small and build to a finish” has been great for me. I don’t feel like a complete failure when I can’t write every day because when I do write, I typically go over the suggested word count.  I’m planning to dedicate large portions of this weekend to FMT actually, and hope to be at Chapter Five by the end of the weekend.

I’m finishing up my first cycle with my students on Tuesday and kicking off the next cycle of new kids which means I’m getting closer to having the bulk of the course written and I won’t have to exert so much mental energy on research. Not only that, but the cycle after this is my turn to do coverage which means I’ll be a sub in the building for 15 days. This is even better — I’ll time to refine the course after having taught it twice, plus I’ll have some break from running my own classes since I’ll be somewhere different and won’t have the usual work to take home.

I appreciate your patience as I got through this first month 🙂 The Flash Fiction schedule is going to change again when we get to November, which I want to talk about more when we get there. I don’t know yet how much until I get some more information about days that we’re off, the exact date of the next cycle, and whether our remote teaching days are in building or at home. I’ll see you guys tomorrow with Signs of Life.

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