In today’s episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes with me throughout my entire week, and I’m going to share with you what I’m working on, what big projects I’m focused on right now, and basically, anything that happens during the week, including any fun or interesting insights that come up as I work with other writers. I did an episode like this back in February of this year, and I got so much feedback on this episode—I heard from so many listeners that this was one of their all-time favorite episodes, so I decided to do another one!

And personally, I love doing these kinds of episodes because I'm always curious to see how people set up their day and what they're working on, and how they choose what they're going to actually work on that week. So, I thought you might be curious to know what I do all day as an editor and book coach—what I focus on and how I navigate through many, many, many action items. So, that’s what this episode is all about. 

But before we get into my Sunday update, I wanted to tell you that this is the hundredth episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast—and that is just wild to me! I started this podcast because on a whim back in 2019—which in hindsight, is so surprising to me because I'm an introvert at heart—but it's one of the best things I've ever done. And I’m so thrilled to see and hear how many of you like this podcast. I'm beyond grateful for you. Thank you for the reviews you've left, every time you've downloaded an episode, thank you for subscribing and following and sharing the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast with others. You’re the reason I keep showing up here, so thank you so very much!

A Week in the Life: 7 Days Behind the Scenes with Savannah

Sunday Update

Okay, so this is my first entry for our behind-the-scenes podcast episode, and it’s Sunday evening, which is when I normally sit down with my planner and take a look at everything I have coming up this week. I like to know what’s come up in the week ahead, and I like to make sure I have enough time blocked out to get everything done. If I don’t do this, then I start my Monday feeling super all over the place, and it’s too hectic feeling for me. Knowing what’s coming and what needs to get done helps me focus and troubleshoot problems before they happen.

So, for example, I was looking at the week ahead and what I have on my to-do list, and I realized that although I wanted to record a handful of podcast episodes this week, I don’t actually have enough time to record as many as I wanted to. So, you might have heard me talk about this before, but I try to batch-record my podcast episodes five or so at a time because it takes me a while to edit the audio and do all the behind-the-scenes stuff like that. So, having a handful of audio files already recorded just helps me be able to do all the back-end work whenever I have pockets of time here and there. So, on my to-do list, I wanted to record five episodes this week, but I just don’t have that much time because of other projects and commitments. Since it’s Sunday and I haven’t gotten into the work week yet, I can move things around—which, in this case, I can either move recording all five episodes to the following week OR I can split the batch and record three this week and two next. And that’s actually what I’m going to do. I’ll feel better having some recorded than none. So, anyway, just an example of why it makes me feel so much better to have a look at my schedule for the upcoming week on Sunday. 

Now, this week, I have a few big things to do. I have to finish a manuscript evaluation for a client, and I feel good about that. I am having a final coaching call with another client who I’ve been working with for about six months—so she has finished her draft and is ready to move onto the next steps with or without me, and I’ll talk about that more later in the week. Abigail and I have to finalize our presentation for the book club meeting on Thursday, so we’re going to meet with about 50 or so writers and discuss Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and we’re both super excited about that.

On Thursday, I also have two group calls, so one of them is a Q&A call with the students in my Notes to Novel course, and the other is a Q&A with the writers who are in my Story Lab membership. I’ll talk about that more on Thursday. And then I have a ton of other smaller things to do in between those bigger things. So, I will get into more details as the week unfolds, but those are kind of the big-picture things I’m looking at this week. And I’m going to end my Sunday update there because I need to go make dog food!

So, I actually make my dogs homemade food every week following a recipe from a company called Just Food For Dogs, and all three of them are obsessed with it. This week I’m making the beef and russet potato recipe, so it’s pretty much just what it sounds like—beef, vegetables like peas, carrots, green beans, and potatoes—all cooked together in an Instapot with some fish oil, and this nutrient blend powder just to make sure they get all their vitamins and minerals and things like that. But yeah, my dogs love it, no matter which flavor I make, and it’s not that hard to cook. It takes me about 30 minutes to make their food for the whole week. So, that’s what I’m going to do, and then I’m going to head to bed early because we got up at five to take our two boy dogs to dock diving this morning, so we’re all tired. But anyway, I will talk to you first thing tomorrow morning with a Monday update!

Monday Update

Good morning! It’s bright and early Monday morning and I’m here to update you on what I have coming up today. For me, Mondays are days that I work on my business. Sometimes that looks like recording podcast episodes. Other times that looks like doing a bunch of admin type work. It just depends on where I’m at in the month. Today is going to be a mixture of podcast work and admin work because I do have to edit a podcast episode—it’s an episode where I asked five coaches and editors to submit their favorite mindset tip—so, I have the audio for that, and now I just need to stitch it all together and record an intro and things like that, so that won’t be too time-consuming.

After that, I’m going to be digging in and finishing the presentation or our book club meeting on Thursday, so that will take a large chunk of the day. And then I have some other random stuff to do that I will catch you up on at the end of the day. So, I hope you have a good day today, and I will check in later today with my Monday evening update!

Okay, I’m back, and it’s Monday evening now. I got the podcast episode edited and ready to publish to you all on Tuesday, so that’s great. I also finished the book club presentation slide deck, so another big thing off the list. Abigail and I will meet later in the week, probably tomorrow or Wednesday, to just go through it one last time together before we go live on Thursday. So, very excited about that.

And I got a few other things done today that I needed to check off the list. So, one of them was I filled out two “speaker applications” to basically pitch myself to two different conferences or summits that are coming up later this year. And I love speaking at these events because a) I love helping writers, obviously, and b) they’re usually free for writers to attend, which I think is pretty cool. Who doesn’t love a free learning opportunity, right? So, I filled out those two forms—I’m sure they get many speakers who apply, so we’ll see what happens with those.

After that, I went though my inbox and replied to a bunch of emails because Mondays are always busy inbox days. And speaking of, I got an email from a past client letting me know she’s publishing another book, which is very exciting. So, we—I don’t think we worked on that second book together, or if we did, it was in the very early brainstorming phase and we probably just chatted about it, but anyway—we had worked on her first book together, which has now been published, and she emailed to tell me that a) her second book was being published—which is very, very cool, but also b) that it was so much easier to write because of the tools she learned while working together. And I love hearing that so much. I love hearing that, with the proper toolset, writing can be fun and easier. It’s so true, and I’m so very happy for this client and I can’t wait to share her story all over the place when I’m officially allowed to talk about it. 

So, that’s really it for today. I got done what needed to get done and I’m feeling pretty good about where I’m at. Now it’s time for walking the dogs and dinner and stuff like that, so I will sign off for today and be back first thing tomorrow. I’ll talk to you then!

Tuesday Update

Good morning! I’m here for a Tuesday update and this one is going to be quick because my Tuesdays are all about client work. So, I have some calls today and tomorrow, and then when I’m not actually talking to my clients, I will be working through the pages, giving them feedback and things like that. So, that’s what I’m doing today, and I’ll be back later this afternoon with another update.

Okay, so it’s Tuesday evening now and I got all of my client work done, so that’s good, but I have to tell you two things that happened today. First, one of my clients got an excellent write up in Publisher’s Weekly, and I wanted to read you some of it… So, this author’s name is Jamie Varon and she was on the podcast a few weeks ago, and her book is called Main Character Energy. So, the write up in Publisher’s Weekly describes her book and then it says, “Varon crafts fully realized protagonists whose authorial ambitions and frustrations will resonate with bookish readers. The plot takes many satisfying turns, and the beautiful French backdrop will appeal to armchair travelers. Varon has a promising career in fiction in front of her.” How cool is that!? Jamie, if you’re listening to this, big congratulations to you—you deserve every bit of that goodness, and I love that they called your book a sparkling debut! That’s so cool. I love, love, love getting updates like this in my inbox.

Now, something else happened today that I wasn’t sure I was going to share with you, but then after thinking about it and sitting with it for awhile, I decided it would be good to share. So, long story short, I have a client right now who is really mad at me. I read their first draft and I had to basically tell this person that their story didn’t work for various reasons. Now, interestingly enough, the plot of the story did work—there was an external change in the story from start to finish and things made sense on the surface, which—someitmes that’s half the battle, right?

But beyond that, this writer had a few really difficult things to work with. So, they had decided to use an unreliable narrator, and they had decided to write kind of in diary entires and kind of in real time, and a few other things that made this particular story more difficult to write than others. So, to clarify, it wasn’t that the unreliable narrator or the framing device of the story was a bad idea—I’m not opposed to trying things like that. But it was more like a combination of too many difficult things, and then not the right execution of those things, that made the draft not work.

So, you know I always like to say this is a judgement free zone, right? And that’s how I approached this story and the feedback I gave this author. I basically said, here’s what isn’t working and why it’s not working, and then on the flip side, here’s what’s working that we can just amplify in the next draft. So, long story short, this writer is very upset with me right now, and they are upset because from their perspective, it feels like I don’t understand what they’re tyring to do with their story. And they feel like I should see things in the story the way they see them—so, when I say something doesn’t work and here’s why, they feel like that thing does work and here’s why. So, there’s a disconnect there, and that’s why I wanted to tell you about this in my update.

Because here’s the thing, it’s not like one of us is right and the other is wrong. And I’m not trying to tell this writer they can’t do what they want in their story—so, for example, I’m not saying don’t use an unreliable narrator. My job as their editor is to support them and help them get the story they want to tell on the page—so, if what they have written isn’t translating, it’s my job to highlight that. And I’m bringing this up because this type of disconnect between writer and editor does happen. It’s very hard for both parties when it does, of course, because no one likes to feel misunderstood or like maybe their editor isn’t a great partner or whatever feelings come up. But, and this is the important part, what is really great about this writer is they are brave enough to share their feelings in a respectful way. So, I can tell they are upset and unhappy, but because they’re communicating their feelings and doing so in a respectful way, that allows us to start troubleshooting and digging into find the root cause of the problem.

And I think that’s what I want to highlight more than anything… That when you’re looking for someone to work with, whether that be a beta reader, an editor, or even an agent—you’re not always going to agree on things or see eye to eye and that person might have to tell you something you don’t like (or vice versa)... But what’s important is that you keep that line of communication open and realize that it’s not really about you or about them. Like, yes, it’s personal because it’s your story and that is a very person thing you worked hard on, but it’s not about you as an individual or your editor or agent as an individual. So, I guess what I’m saying is don’t be afraid to have these kind of hard conversations or to share your feelings—because in most cases, your editor or agent or whoever you need to have these conversations with—they’re going to want your story to work just as much as you do. And yeah, it’s going to be uncomfortable for both of you—it’s super hard for me to have a writer I’m working with upset and frustrated with me. I am a sensitive person, so it’s very hard to feel like you’re responsible for making someone feel that way. But at the same time, it’s my job and my duty to give my honest assessment of their work. So, anyway, it’s not comfortable for either party, but if this ever happens to you—and if you can keep that line of communication open, even if it’s uncomfortable—you will get it sorted out and your story will end up stronger for it because of the collaboration that goes into the solution. So, anyway, just my two cents. 

I also wanted to talk about the burden of knowledge a writer has about their own story because that’s some of what’s happening in this scenario. And what I mean by a writer’s burden of knowledge is that you know everything about your story, right? When you’re writing it, you can see it in your mind’s eye. But sometimes that doesn’t translate onto the page, so when someone else reads your story, they might have questions about why a character did something or maybe they point out that something doesn’t make sense or whatever it is. So, you as the writer have the burden of knowledge—of knowing everything there is to know about what’s happening—and it’s a burden because it’s hard to translate that to the page.

That’s why beta readers and editors are so critical to work with in this process—and for myself included. Yes, I’m an editor and a coach, but i still have that burden of knowledge about my own stories. What’s clear ot me might not be clearot the reader and that’sreally important to know. And with this writer specifically, or why I’m bringing it up is that this is part of this writer’s frustration. So, in my notes i would ask things like, “Why is your character doing this? Or why did she just say this?” and the writer has a very valid explanation of why—like the explanation makes total sense to me, but the context of that explanation is not on the page, so how would the reader know? And again, I’m telling you this as an example of what to keep an eye on in your own writing—and to encourage you to work with people who can help you see where what’s in yoru head isn’t making it onto the page.

So I just wanted to tell you this as an example of what to keep an eye on in your own writing, and to encourage you to work with people who can help you see where what's in your head, isn't quite making it onto the page. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the best things you can do is find yourself a partner—whether it's a beta reader and editor or a coach or whoever that is—find someone that you can have these hard conversations with because they probably will come up from time to time. And find someone who believes in your story because that's kind of what it all comes down to. I really do think that this writer and I will find a solution. We will find our way out of this mess because we both really believe in the story that they're trying to tell. So anyway, just wanted to share that, and I hope it's helpful to some of you who are listening.

Now, the last thing I wanted to share as an update for Tuesday is that I did record two podcast episodes today. So I didn't quite make it to three, but that's okay. I'm going to go ahead and move that final one into next week because I just don't think I'm going to have time to get that done the rest of the week. And that's okay. So, I recorded two podcasts episodes today. I probably won't go back and edit them. I'll just do that at some point when I have little pockets of time. So, overall, today was kind of a mixed bag. I got good news from a client this morning, I had some great client calls, and then I received an email from a writer who's super upset with me. So, yeah, kind of a mixed bag, but it happens. Everyday isn't going to be sunshine and rainbows, no matter how much we want it to be, but you know, I just have to keep a positive outlook and keep doing the work! So with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and wrap up my Tuesday update and I will be back first thing tomorrow with an update for Wednesday. I will talk to you then!

Wednesday Update

Hello and good morning! It’s Wednesday now and I have some client calls today that are happening first thing this morning, so I need to make this update quick. After those calls, I am going to review the questions that came in for two Q&A calls that I have tomorrow. One of them is for my Notes to Noel students, so, if you are currently in the Notes to Novel program, I will see you tomorrow for an hour long Q&A. And the other Q&A I’m doing tomorrow is for my membership. So, for those of you who don’t know, I have a membership that writers get invited into once they’ve taken my Notes to Novel course, and it’s called The Story Lab.

So, basically, inside of that membership, there are different weekly deliverables… In the first week of the month, there’s an hour long training on a different writing topic. In the second week of the month, we have group coaching where I pick 3-5 writers to come on camera with me and talk through whatever’s got them stuck, or maybe we’ll go through a scene to talk through what could be improved, or anything like that. In the third week, we look at a scene together from either a published novel or a work in progress novel and pick it apart to see the structure, and what’s working or not working, and things like that. And then in the fourth week of the month, we have a Q&A session. So, I jump on Zoom with all of my Story Lab members and we do an hour long Q&A. And since today is Wednesday and the calls are tomorrow, I go into the form that my students use to submit their questions and i collect them all and grab any links or resources i might want to talk about or bring up during the live call. So, that’s what I’llbe doing later today along with some other miscellaneous stuff that I’ll explain more later. So, that’s my very quick update and I’ll be back later today for an evening update!

Okay friends, it’s Wednesday evening now and I got all the prep work done for my Q&A calls tomorrow. I also had some lovely calls with my private coaching clients that I’ll talk about more in a second. And then I had some random admin stuff to catch up on after that. So, one of those admin things was I had to write a handful of emails to promote an event that I’m speaking at in September. And I know that might sound crazy because it’s July, but whenever I’m able to I like to get ahead of work like that. So, I had all the information I needed to write the emails for this event, so that’s what I did and it felt good to check that off the list.

But what I really wanted to talk to you about or update you on is what I talked about with two of my coaching clients today. One of them has a finished draft and she’s about to be out on submission for the second time. Long story short, she had an agent but the relationship didn’t totally work out, so they ended their relationship and now she’s looking for new representation. And in case you’re wondering, yes, that does happen sometimes and it’s all very amicable, but that’s where she’s currently at. So, before she sends her story out again, before she queries, she wants to make sure it’s as good as it can possibly be. So, we had made some changes to her story based on feedback from some of the rejections she received and we felt really good about those, but then we both had this feeling like something was off with the first chapter still. We kept asking ourselves, "Is this really the best way to start the story? Or can we do better?" And what we ended up realizing is that her opening chapter didn’t speak to the big picture enough. So, it was a good opening chapter and it worked from a technical aspect, but if we zoomed out and thought about what kinds of questions readers would be asking coming out of this chapter or how readers would be feeling, we kind of just realized it wasn’t as good as it could be. 

So we brainstormed some ideas of things she could do to either tweak the current opening chapter to make it speak to the big picture of her story a bit more. And we discussed some options of what it would look like if we just kind of trashed the whole first chapter and picked a new starting point that gets readers asking the right questions and feeling the overall tone of the story that she really wanted to establish in the beginning. It was an interesting thought experiment for us because we have been working on this story for so long, and we had both kind of fallen in love with the opening and maybe weren't looking at it as objectively as we both could have. And that happens sometimes, right? It's hard when you've been looking at the same story for so long and you just kind of get used to certain chapters or certain details being there—especially when they work, it's like hard to talk yourself out of keeping them. But sometimes it's really good to just kind of zoom out and think of the reader. And to ask yourself, "What do I really want the reader to be experiencing at this point in time? And are these details or are these chapters the right fit for the effect that I'm trying to have?" So her homework today leaving our call is that she's going to go and revise that opening chapter. And I'm very excited to see what she comes up with. I think this is the right call. And it's going to be really fun to see how her query and goes now that she has an even better query letter, an even better synopsis, and she'll have an even better opening chapter by the time we're done working on it. So very interesting and very excited to see where that goes!

In my other client call, we talked about this writers next steps. So, she has finished her third draft and now she’s heading in the direction of indie publishing her book, and one of the questions she asked me was, “Are we sure this is ready to go? Are we sure there’s not more I can do before its published?” And my answer to her was kind of like, look, we can tweak any story all day and it’ll probably never be perfect—there’s always going to be something that could have been done better, but at the end of the day, is that what you want to spend all your time doing? Do you want to work on this story for three, four, five more years? And then on the flip side of those questions, I asked her if she felt good about where her story is at—like is she proud of the state of her current manuscript and does she look forward to sharing it with others in its current state? And she realized that yes, she was super proud of it, she loved the story as is and she was ready to move onto other projects.

So, I wanted to share this with you today because if you’re ever in a similar situation, I think it’s important to realize that no matter how much you edit something, it’s probably never going to be perfect. I’ve heard some of my favorite authors say that in hindsight there are things they would have done differently or changed about their published books, but that doesn’t stop readers from loving them, right? And it doesn’t stop readers from experiencing the story and having emotional reactions to them or falling in love with the characters, which is kind of what most of us writers want, right? So, knowing a story can never be 100% perfect, I think the next best question to ask is, did I do my best with this story given where I’m at in life and given where I’m at with my skillset? Is it a story I feel proud of and that I am eager to share with other people? And if you answer yes to these questions, then I think it’s probably okay to give yourself the grene light to publish or to query or to do whatever next steps you’re going ot pursue. It also helps to have beta readers and/or an editor or coach in yoru corner who can kind of say, yes, I agree with you, it’s time to let this project go and get it out into the world. So, anyway, just some food for thought! And I will go ahead and wrap up my Wednesday update there, so I’ll see you for another update tomorrow morning. Talk to you then!

Thursday Update

Good morning, it’s now Thursday and I’m really excited for what I have on the calendar today. So, I mentioned this yesterday that I had two live Q&A sessions to today—one for my Notes to Novel students and the other for my Story Lab members—and I am really looking forward to these. I love seeing all of my students and I love hearing all of their updates about how their writing is going and I love answering their questions or helping them brainstorm or get unstuck… it’s just so much fun. So, I have two of those calls today and then inbetween those calls, I’m going to catch up on client work and some miscellaneous admin stuff that I need to get done. So, that’s really all I have for you this morning… I’ll be back later today to let you know how everything went.

Okay, I’m back for a Thursday evening update and I cannot believe I forgot to mention that it was book club day in my morning update. So, I literally just got off our book club call and it was so much fun—shout out to anyone who joined us to talk about Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus! We talked about so many interesting things whether it was craft related or more general about the story, and oh my gosh, the people who showed up had the best questions and comments. I swear, sometimes I think you all could lead the book club meeting because you have such excellent insights. So, if you came to the meeting, thank you and I so appreciate you being there.

But for everyone else, I think my favorite thing we talked about was how in a character driven story (or a story where the internal genre takes the lead), there still needs to be concrete character goals and conflict. So, I’ll probably do a whole episode on this soon, but I’ll talk about it quickly here. At one point in the meeting, I asked everyone who they thought the antagonist of the story was and almost everyone said “the patriarchy.” And like yes, this is true, right? If you’ve read the book, you might have the same answer. But there are multiple characters within the story who represent the patriarchy and who are essential the face of the patriarchy—one in particular is the main character’s boss who I would say is the primary antagonist and who represents everything the patriarchy stands for. So, anyway, if you want to hear more about that or if you’re writing a story where the force of antagonism feels big and nebulous like “the patriarchy” or “the government” or whatever it is, you might find the recording of this book club meeting helpful. 

Earlier, I mentioned I had two Q&A calls and those both went really, really well. I love seeing my students stories develop in real time from week to week. It’s so satisfying to watch as big “a-ha” moments happen or when someone figures out a big plot hole or gets ot the bottom of who a character is… it’s just so cool. It gives me life. But anyway, the calls went great and one of my students mentioned using Chat GPT to search for comp titles and I think that’s such a cool idea. If you don’t know what Chat GPT is, it’s basically an AI chat bot, so you can type in something like… "Can you recommend novels published in the last five years that are similar in plot to Bridget Jones’s Diary (or whatever you’re looking for)?" And it will spit out some suggestions—not all the suggestions are perfect, but every now and then it does come up with something cool. So, I don’t know, go check it out if that sounds fun.

And I think that’s where I’ll end my update for this evening. I am going to go drink a bunch of water because I’ve done a lot of talking today and then take the pups for a walk and then I’m going to start reading The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros which I’m very excited to start, so I will sign off for today and I’ll be back in the morning ith another update!

Friday Update

Hello, hello! Happy Friday. I’m recording my update a little later than normal today because I took one of my dogs, Luna, into the vet to get a shot—just one of her normal yearly shots—and so now i’m starting the work day a little late which is fine. I don’t have any calls today because Fridays are kind of my catch up days or days when I finish big projects and things like that. So, my main focus for today is to start planning for this 5-day challenge I want to do in September, and you’ll hear more about it closer to the time it goes live, but basically, I want to get a bunch of writers together for a 5-day challenge where we work on developing high concept ideas—so, ideas you can easily communicate in one sentence that really hook someone’s interest and make them want to read more. And I have some fun ideas for this, so today is going to be really early stages of mapping that out. I have a handful of other things on the list today, too, but I’ll tell you more about those when I come back for an evening update. I’ll talk to you then!

Okay friends Im back for a Friday evening update and one of my clients just sent me this review she got from Book Life which is the indie side of Publisher’s Weekly and I want to read it to you because I’m so excited for her! So, first of all, it gave her book 9/10 ratings across the board which is amazing. And then it says a whole bunch of flattering stuff in the review, but I really like this part. It says, “While the topic of artificial intelligence is familiar territory for fiction, Lauer’s work feels especially original, riveting, and timely.” And I should mention, this is Jennifer Lauer’s book called The Girl in the Zoo. But oh my gosh, I’m so proud of her and this is such a great review that I just saw before coming onto record this update so I had to share!

Okay, so like I mentioned earlier, I did work on planning out the 5-day challenge that I want to run in September and I don’t have everything figured out yet, but I did a brain dump of my ideas and put together a project plan so that I know the gist of what I need to do, at least at this point. So, keep an eye out for that sometime in September.

The other thing I did today was, I had to send the Women’s Fiction Writer’s Association some information because they do an auction every year and I donate some of my courses and/or editing packages or coaching packages to their auction every year. So I had to send them some info so they could get all of that set up on their end–it’s a very cool auction. If you’re a member of the WFWA, and if you haven’t seen their action before, definitely keep an eye out for that this year.

Other than that, I caught up on emails and did some miscellaneous admin work just to get some things wrapped up for the week, and since I actually finished what I needed to do early, I took my dogs to the park this afternoon which was super fun and then I started reading a new client’s draft. And if you ask me that’s a really fun way to end the work week, so I will end today’s wrap up there. 

I’m not going to do a Saturday update but I’ll tell you what we have planned for this wekened because I’m a dork and I’m excited about what we’re doing. So, we got an above ground pool for my dogs—it’s nothing fancy, but it’s big enough for them to get in and do a few doggie paddles from end to end. I think it’s 15 feet long so, just big enough. But anyway, one of the legs broke and they haven’t been able to use it for a few weeks because we haven’t gone to get the replacement leg. So, we’re going to fix that for them this weekend so they can swim. And yes, I know I’m a total dog dork, I love my dogs, and I love doing things that let them have fun so that’s what I’m doing this weekend. And I’m really excited. 

Now, one more thing I want to say is that last time I recorded an episode like this, I ended the week not getting everything on my to do list done. But this week, I did finish everything that needed to be finished, and that feels really good. My to do list is not empty by any means, it’s like a mile long, but not everything had to get done this week. I wanted to talk about this quickly because not working myself to death is actually kind of hard for me. I think this comes from my corporate days where there was never enough time to do everything and not enough people to do them either, but sometimes i feel like if i have an easy week, I must have done something wrong or maybe I’m not doing enough. But this year I’m trying to be more conscious of this and of giving myself white space.

So, that is the end of the “week in the life” episode, and I hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride this week—I know I sure had fun. I got to share some things with you that I typically don’t get to talk about on this podcast because I’m usually talking about how to write or edit or publish a book, and it was just fun taking you behind the scenes with me and sharing some of the things I don’t get to talk about much. So, I hope you enjoyed the journey with me, and I will be back next week with another new episode, so I’ll talk to you then!