SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

Hiya ?

Happy Thursday! At the start of the year, I had planned to post my Author Journal updates on Mondays to align with most people’s workweek. However, Monday is the end of my workweek, and I felt rushed to get the post out before the weekend.

So, after a few weeks of trying it out, I’ve decided to return to my original posting plan on Wednesdays. And yes, I know it’s Thursday today, but I had such a great weekend that I didn’t want to cut into it by thinking about work. ?

Now, let’s take a look at how last week went.

Review 30th January – 5th February 2023

Last week’s goals were:

• Write Elle’s Got Company scene (this time from Adam’s point of view)
• Elle Reacts to Adam’s ‘Visit’ (wasn’t on the list but should have been)
• Write Adam’s at the Door scene
• Write The Bathroom Scene (whoops, this should never have been on the list.)

Here’s How It Went

The mess of the above list should serve as a taster of how the week went. ?

I struggled to get much done on Thursday, day one of my week. I figured I needed to find a better way to manage my time, as I’ve become so lax with my physical planner, so I downloaded a popular project management app. I spent an entire afternoon setting up databases, and it looked like it would be a game-changer.

I spent the whole of Friday working on the audio and video for my Things in Scots post. Yip, I know most blog posts are done weeks in advance, but I’m not built that way. I wish I was, but alas, I’m not.

Saturday was a bit better in that I got a bit of writing done, but the afternoon was spent doing the subtitles for the previous day’s post. It was at this point that I decided that full-post videos were way too time-consuming for me to continue with.

Sunday… Sunday was a real bear. By 0515, I learned my month-old MacBook had two viruses. I instantly knew how I’d gotten them.

You see, that very popular project management app wasn’t new to me. I’d had it on my old Mac a while back, even used some of the project templates others had created… until I found two viruses on said Mac.

I’d put the viruses down to one of the user-created templates I’d downloaded. Giving myself shit the whole three days it took to get rid of them—lots of back and forth with the antivirus app guys.

My theory that the viruses were embedded in one of those templates made me give the main app another go. Not in a million years did I think it was in the app installation file. But it was.

Luckily, I only lost four hours getting my system clean again. With what was left of my day, I managed to get some more writing in—completing Adam’s version of the Elle’s Got Company scene.

Monday, I was more productive than I usually am before my weekend. I wrote most of the Adam’s at the Door scene, but it was a struggle. The struggle was that I’d made some changes to the story in the first half of Act One (to do with Elle’s sister Dani’s level of involvement), and those changes had knock-on effects in other scenes—specifically the ones I’d planned on writing this week.

That means… this week’s goals are slightly different than I’d planned.

This Week’s Goal

• Fix the Dani knock-on effects
• Reflect fixes in scene-blocking sheets
• Finish writing Adam’s at the Door scene
• Write The Bathroom scene
• Write The Meet scene

I’m hopeful that I can achieve all of this, and my re-instated physical planner (with all the new stickers I made yesterday) tells me it should be doable. You know, so long as I don’t download anything or try to make more videos ?

How did your last week go? What are your goals this week? Let me know in the comments!

Wishing you all a great week!