I had gained a little bit of weight before I went to a resort in Florida for a week. Exactly no one is surprised that I gained a little more while in Florida.

This doesn’t feel like permanent weight, though. I’m not going to diet, but I am going to be very careful this week and see if that will start bringing the weight off. If it doesn’t, I’ll go back to measuring everything out again and carefully counting all my calories. I will NOT get back into the habit of gaining weight and never taking it back off until it’s a lot.

I wrote about 40K words last month. Not the worst month this year, but no where near what I’d hoped. I also had two weeks where I barely wrote at all, one week of being sick and one week in Florida. All considered, 40K isn’t horrible. However, I don’t know if I’m going to make my annual goal of 750K words by the end of the year, even with a writing marathon thrown in. We’ll see.

Today, I will mail off to my Patrons postcards that I bought in Florida. I will also email out the short stories. If you’re interested, go sign up.

While at NINC, I got to meet the Brads – that is, the two guys who created Vellum. I fan-girled all over them. I have Vellum stickers, as well as a Vellum coaster. Happy to send one of those to whoever signs up this month over on my Patreon.

I think I mentioned that I went to a panel that talked about imaging your perfect life, ten years from now. I’m still working on that. I’m also looking at how to improve my productivity, and to feel good about what I do.

I was success for a while with one planner, then that stopped working. So I switched to a different planner, which worked for a while, then that stopped working.

So this month, I’m going to try a sprint. Basically, plan out all the things you’re going to do for 30 to 90 days, put those on post-it notes, and then move them down along the board.

The reason, I think, that neither of those other planning systems worked was because I need two systems that work together, both the weekly plan as well as a monthly or quarterly plan. That was a system that I used for years at the day job. It might work for publishing. It might not. I just need to figure out something that works, and keeps working.

There will be words this morning. I am still recovering from the Florida trip, however. So I don’t have much focus. I had thought about going to a coffee shop this morning, but I’m so tired of not being home I decided not to go, and to just figure out how to make myself focus. Wish me luck!

What changes are you making to your systems or processes? Can be non-writing related.