No, no no! I didn’t mean that kind of elbow 🙂 Anyway…

Yippee! I had my 8-week x-rays of my fractured elbow, and it is nicely healed! I still have to have some scans to see how the soft-tissue damage in my shoulder/arm is doing, and do some physio exercises to get my arm back into its proper extension, and take vitamin C for the continued swelling in my wrist and fingers … but at least I can go ahead and start lifting and stretching, and doing more right-handed handwriting and typing. Wonderful!

So what have I been up to in the past couple weeks?

Editing:

– proof children’s picture book
– edit first 8 chapters of children’s chapter book
– edit 3 or 4 online newspaper articles
– edit another chapter of a novel written by an ESL author (Spanish first language)
– finish editing a sci-fi anthology of short stories by indigenous authors

Reading and Notetaking:

– “Creating Low Content Books Using Canva”
– “Faces” (using portraits as writing starters)
– “How to Craft a Good Opening Sentence”
– “Literary Agents and the Hybrid Author”
– “The Three Bucket Daily Writing System”
– “The Writer’s Manifesto”
– “Using Blog Posts to Prepare to Write a Book”
– Show Us Your Shorts Collection (short-short story Writer’s Digest contest 2015 anthology)
– Voluntary Simplicity (Duane Elgin)
– Christian Writers Market Guide (Sally E. Stuart)
– The Art of the Personal Essay (ed. Phillip Lopate)
– He Loves Me (Wayne Jacobsen)
– reading poetry and short stories from Glimmer Train journals

Webinars:
– “Using Social Media for Indie Authors” (Joel Friedlander and Frances Cabello)

Posts:
– on normajhill.com (this site: my writing and editing blog): “My Right Handed Typing is Back” ; “Finding a Publisher or Agent” (Also created a new “About” page and a new “Contact” page on the site)
– on penandpapermama.com (tutoring blog, and hub blog for all my blogs): “Teaching Sounds Spelled in a Variety of Ways”; “Ways to Read a Difficult Word in a Sentence”; “Long Vowel Sound Tips”
– on normajhill.blogpost.ca (My Church Journal): “What is More Evil?” ; “Connection to Creation”

Workshops:
– organizing and advertising plans for the new Penticton writers’ group–meeting at the Shatford Centre this year
– researching and planning for “Platform and Brand” workshop at the Kelowna Writer’s Guild group in October
– planning for possible workshops at the Shatford Centre this fall and winter

Tutoring:
– many hours of preparation for a special needs student, for her English and Math for 2016-2017
– contacting my tutoring students, and arranging my tutoring timetable for this year

This and That:

• Lots of planning for fall writing, tutoring, editing, and workshops.
• Back to writing bi-weekly letters to the grandkids.
• Journal writing (still mostly left-handed)
• Attended Okanagan Word Guild picnic
• Total cleanup of my email folders (lots of deleting, and some reorganizing)
  Wrote a silly “Addled Paddle Song” poem for Art House Penticton’s new Weekly Art Prompt program
• Noticing a change in the weather from summer to fall — and doing my best to get out and enjoy the few “summery” moments while they last! Also enjoying the bounty of our small garden–tomatoes, herbs, etc.–and starting to put the garden to bed for the coming colder months.