I “retired” from my tutoring business back at the end of June 2023, so I could spend more time doing personal reading and writing. I did mostly take off July and August, because it was summer holidays of course (being a child of teachers, and having been a teacher myself, I do have the “summer holidays” habit!). I spent lots of wonderful time entertaining my kids and grandkids, and I did a fair amount of quilting, embroidering, and coloring—other reasons I decided to retire from tutoring!

I did spend a fair amount of time in September planning for a workshop on “Writing Through Grief and Loss” which I presented at the Wine Country Writers’ Festival https://wcwfestival.com/ in Penticton near the end of September. And after that, I continued, off and on, with my editing business, and coaching writers—and a bit of blogging. But honestly, I really didn’t do a lot of reading and writing. Maybe I was being a bit lazy; besides which, we had several “losses” in our extended family, especially in November and December … and that caused a lot of “brain fog” and other symptoms of depression. Finally, I took the advice of family and friends, and spent some time attending doctor appointments and some counselling … and gradually I’m getting “back to normal,” hurrah!

So … that also means I’ve actually finally got around to doing more reading and writing—for my own enjoyment and skill development! I have been keeping track of my reading and writing, and find that by doing so, I am much more motivated to keep at it. What about you? Do you keep track of your reading and writing? If so, does it help keep you on track? If not, what do you do instead to maintain your reading and writing?

Out of curiosity, (and to self-motivate!) I have gone through my record-keeping (agenda book; weekly review listing of activities in a journal dedicated to my reading and writing; and a binder in which I list the posts I make on my several blogs). Well, it does turn out that I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading and writing between January 1 and now (February 12), though I haven’t been doing as much blogging as I intended; still, with all the journaling and writing prompts I’ve been doing, I have lots of material from which to draw on for future blogs. Yay! Anyway, here are some details:

Reading I have done:
Five Little Peppers And How They Grew (Margaret Sidney) (children’s novel)
Partnership and Mission (ed. Ken Gray) (took about 8.5 hr to read)
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act (Bob Joseph) (took about 3.5 hr to read)
Complicated Grief: How to Understand, Express, and Reconcile Your Especially Difficult Grief (Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt) (1 hr read)

Reading and related writing:
Crafting the Personal Essay (Dinty W. Moore) (I have been reading; writing down quotes, and writing down prompts plus responding to a number of them; so far, a total of about 15 hours … and more to do.)
Self Care Takes Courage (Julie Vermette) (I have read this book, highlighted helpful information, and have done a fair amount of journaling in the book, as it is set up with space to do so. Total 7 hours)

Writing I have done:
Journaling (in a journal with narrow lined pages, so lots of writing!) Total of 28 pages; about 6 hours of writing)
Writing Responses to One Hundred and One Writing Prompts (I have a stack of writing prompts I’ve collected – but this is my favorite! Lots of fun personal history prompts. Only trouble is, I didn’t record the author! Anyway, since Jan 1 I have done prompts #24 to #46 … and that is about 5 hours of writing!).

Blogging update:
In the past couple of weeks, I have updated several “pages” on my penandpapermama.com site https://penandpapermama.com/ and on this normajhill.com site (On this site, mostly updating my “Writing Experiences” and “Editing Experiences” pages. And on both sites, updating my “About” and other similar pages). (Total time: about 3.5 hours). Oh! And a new post on my penandpapermama.com site, inspired by a Facebook post I made with a memory of my grade 8 and 9 Home Ec teacher (1968 to 1970) … which got lots of comments … and requests from her former students for copies of her recipes which I still have … so I put together a 15 page downloadable document, which has been well received 😊 https://penandpapermama.com/2024/02/08/mrs-halls-grade-8-and-9-home-ec-recipes/

Other reading- and writing-related activities so far in 2024:
Daily reading of online articles related to writing, editing, and publishing—and posting links to them on Facebook groups (OWL and BCWAE groups) and on Twitter.
Updating writing, editing, publishing, BC writing groups, and other lists on the BCWAE Facebook files page https://www.facebook.com/groups/1518194541798581/files/files.
Wrote a romantic story for Valentines Day and read it on CFUZ radio “Local Matters” program, hosted by Aggie Stevens (will be posted any day now on https://cfuz.ca/programs/pages/localmatters/ … and yes, it is up! Scroll to Episode 52 and start listening at the 29:40 point 🙂
Facilitating local OWL (Okanagan-South Writers’ League) meetings, twice monthly, here i. Penticton (a Feedback group, and a more general writers’ group), and sending out email reminders and updates.
Writing detailed notes for doctor and counsellor.
Creating a new personal phone list (the old one was years old and very outdated!).
Reading scriptures and other spirituality items.
Doing editing, photo scanning, and coaching writers (2 client manuscripts have just gone to designer Dawn Renaud for preparation before publishing … and a Master’s degree Capstone by a client is nearing readiness for submission).
Attending a “Reconciliation Learning Circle” local group.
And of course reading newspapers and so on!

So… I feel like I’m actually finally getting into my goal of doing more personal reading and writing! Hurrah again!

Your Turn 🙂 Do you have specific reading and writing goals for 2024? How are those going for you? Please feel free to share yours in the comments (click on the “comment” link in the top left corner). Let’s inspire each other 😊