Hopes and Dreams

It’s summer! ☀️

In times of abrupt transition (like every school break), it’s hard for me to slow down. Still, as I’ve gotten older, it’s easier for me to rest in limited doses. You see, resting is a wellness practice I can feel accomplished about. 🙄

For instance, I watch tv (thinking about story and writing), I go to bed early (optimizing my sleep per functional health specialist), I take naps during the day (because I’m listening to my body, duh). I just ate a cookie, which isn’t resting, but it was delicious and a treat. 🍪

And, then I also have long to-do lists and forge ahead on lots of plans. I told a friend the other day that this summer, I’d like to have a personal improvement plan, and she just laughed in my face. “I can’t support that,” she said. I think the implication is that I don’t need a personal improvement plan? But, I mean, why not? It’s fun and good to have goals and collect self-inflicted gold stars. 🤷🏻‍♀️ ⭐️

Anyway, this email is not the outline of my improvement plan. Instead, it’s my hopes and dreams for the summer. 💪🏻

• First, I want to write my fifth novel. I recently (like last week) started from scratch on this thing, which I originally began drafting last November. I’m reinventing everything except the setting and general premise. Too soon to say how it’s going, but my plan is to amass a bunch of readable words by August. I’m doing a word count per day (started at 500, will up it to 800 next week), but also hoping to churn out a bunch while I’m on a river cruise with my mom. I’ll work on the airplane and between lectures about art and history, a Vienna Symphony performance, and, apparently, an apricot dumpling demonstration at an abbey. Maybe the book will stop taking place in the Aspen Airport and start taking place on a Viking River Cruise?! 🚢 Time will tell. I’m going to discover it for a few weeks rather than rushing into a new synopsis. This is mostly because I hate writing synopses, and I like to write whatever I want.

• I want to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Making Friends Can Be Murder. It came out last June 10th, which is tomorrow! Happy birthday, Making Friends! I was so happy with how this book turned out. I’m still proud of it, and I loved the characters so much that I self-published a holiday-themed sequel, for which I still get a few bucks in royalties from Amazon each month. I’d like to write another book in this series, but that’s not on the agenda for this summer anymore because Pasty (Book 5) has been taking a lot of time, like since last November and I have nothing much to show for it. There’s a limit to productivity, as it turns out. The Sarahs will have to wait.

• I would like to work with at least ten tutoring clients. I think I’ll make it! I’m at 8! I am helping people with college essays, ACT prep, summer reading, and literacy skills. I also have a couple of manuscript clients. (These are adults who are working on fiction projects of their own.) You can schedule your tutoring appointments here or reach out to me for more information!

• And, I want to get in better shape. To that end, I’m adding some weightlifting and some faster running workouts.

• Finally, I need to become an empty nester. Just a small thing, right? Move the older kid to New York City. Move the younger one to Colorado Springs. Begin my new life with no dependents living in the home. It’s cool. It’s cool. 🆒