Been kind of a week. Drove down to Lincoln City, OR to deliver brownies to a friend. Then spent time recovering from said trip. Have been making slow progress on yard work for the property, clearing out more space for the strawberries that have agreed to take over the garden, weeding, planting grass seed where the construction chewed up the lawn, and so on.

At some point I need to post pictures. Spring is lovely out here. The crabapple that we planted in the upper meadow has blossomed and looks so pretty! And it smells divine.

The mint has truly gone wild as well. I have harvested the chocolate mint as well as the apple mint and have dried a good quantity of those. We also had spearmint, peppermint, and orange mint. Will trim that back and dried a bunch of it as well.

Still haven’t decided if it’s worth harvesting and drying the nettles. I like nettle tea, but I don’t love it. Not sure it’s worth the hassle.

This morning I made my own tea. Started with a good black Assam base, then added fresh peppermint leaves, bee balm leaves, cacao nibs, dried apple pieces, and some vanilla. Yum.

I’ve discovered that I can drink plain black tea in the morning. It can be slightly flavored. However, drinking a tea that has a lot of oils added to it upsets my stomach and I really need to eat something beforehand.

I’ve finally gotten back into the writing this week. There’s a chance that I’ll do 50K this month, which is always my fallback goal if I can’t make 62.5K. It’s within reach, I just will need to push a little to make it.

While Blaze and I were driving, we planned out the next few Business for Breakfast books. Some of them will be brand new and primarily contain new information, such as the intermediate marketing book as well as the writing in series book.

Others are more repackaging of existing information – like the new book I’ll write for NaNoWriMo writers. I went out looking on Amazon for NaNo books and was horrifically offended by the number of workbooks out there.

I don’t know about you, but for me, being an artist is, in part, learning the delicate dance of when to say “fuck you” to the rest of society. Workbooks and checklists are great for project managers and those goddamned MBAs.

Possibly that’s what you need to get your art done.

Me? Fuck that shit. I’m an adult. I’ll set my own damned goals, and then make them. I don’t need your external structure. It’s so much better to find a project that you get to go play at rather than a ticking clock that forces you to write.

So yeah, there will be fewer fucks in the final draft of the NaNo B4B, not none.

And I’m planning on another intermediate storytelling book. Evidently I have things to say about the craft as well. Who would have thunk it?

Speaking of which – it’s time to get back to the fiction. Kind of loving this novel even though it’s dark and getting darker. It’s the second book in the trilogy. Think “Empire Strikes Back”. Things are going to get really dark for a while before they brighten up again.

I hope that your week has been lovely! Who would you drive half a day to go see and drop off a baked treat?