I run a book club called Women, Wine, and Crime in the Denver, CO area, open to women interested in murder mystery and true crime books. I took over this book club in August of 2020, we read fiction and non-fiction, a new book every (roughly) 6 weeks. I find that six weeks, along with some other parameters I’ve fine-tuned, has increased attendance and more members have fished a larger portion of the book. Here’s a list of past, present, and potential books we’ve read.
I started doing a book every 6 weeks or so last year and it really improved attendance; people had more time to read and more fodder for conversation. We go to different places each time and I initially hadn’t kept track. A few favorites are now closed and I’ve been getting more recommendations from members so I started a sheet that has locations, if they’re good, need to be re-vetted, or are a “no” with qulifiers of “closed” or “bad”; bad being either rudeness, group size difficulties, or parking issues.
I’ve made some changes and have explanded my GoogleSheets that I use plan and organize upcoming events and books. “my GoogleSheets” is a hyperlink to the actual organizer for you to check out as inspo
Recently, memebers have been asking me for more events that are not necessarily book reviews. I’ve decided to comply with the masses and, sandwiched between evey other book, add some other activities. Since the book club is named Women, Wine, and Crime, I decided that the first two would be No Crime, Just Wine; just to get together. The third one will be a book exchange in July since the one in December went well. Essentially, it’s scheduled: book, six weeks, book, three weeks, event, three weeks, book, six weeks, book, etc. So we don’t have an event every three weeks which I think would run the members ragged. The first No Crime, Just Wine, is January 27th; I’ll let you guys know how it goes!
If you view the sheets, let me know if you have any recommendations to improve. I’m also always looking for book recommendations, for the book club or otherwise. If you run a book club, I hope this helps.
*If you enjoyed any part of this post, please consider liking it. If you loved it, please consider following me on WordPress. I also love comments including questions, advice, or a review of the post itself. Thank you for reading and best of luck in your adventures.*
It’s all fine and dandy to say “here’s a cleaning schedule” or “here’s how I plan to tackle”. I did post the intention in October, and now I am backing it up with how it’s actually been going.
I use the following to make sure things are getting done every day/week. Having a list of monthly chores helps me make sure the less-frequently needed tasks get done. I treat these like checklists and move things around if I need to.
I am doing chores more regularly. I used to be so overwhelmed by what needed to be done; now that I’ve done so much I’m less overwhelmed, and having a list helps me narrow done tasks and not be so intimidated. Having a routine has also helped immensely; I’m a creature of habit and I’m much more motivated now that it’s cyclical rather than randomly trying to make time for and do tasks.
I recommend this, tailored to your house, because it’s definitely been working for me.
Have a question? Want a link to any of these spreadsheets? Have a recommendation to further improve this process? How do you keep your home clean?
*If you enjoyed any part of this post, please consider liking it. If you loved it, please consider following me on WordPress. I also love comments including questions, advice, or a review of the post itself. Thank you for reading and best of luck in your adventures.*
I was watching Bones S5 E9: The Lady on the List and, due to goings-on in the episode, the characters began asking each other about and creating or proclaiming their Bucket List(s). I realized I don’t have one and when I thought about what I wanted to do, I just wanted to be successful in career, in my relationship, and ultimately to just be happy.
I met the love of my life. I’ve eaten strange food, have traveled around the Bahamas, Mexico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and at least five U.S. states, maybe ten. I’ve been to Disney Land in California and Disney World is Florida. I’ve lived by beaches and in great awe of the mountains. If I never see all fifty and if I never see the eight wonders of the world or other major destinations, I won’t be disappointed. I’ve ridden a motorcycle, been in limos, rode on a train, in helicopter, in a hot air balloon, and flown in a plane. I’ve been to a Bruce Springsteen Concert and a few Billy Joel concerts as well as countless others. I would’ve liked to have seen Prince with my dad, Prince was one of his favorite artists. I did a 50k bike ride, have run multiple half marathons, hiked a portion of the Appalachian trail, and ran a color run. I have no desire to run a full or do any x-athlons.
Just in case I’m missing something, here are some tips I considered and tried to create a list.
This list was mostly travel ideas or suggestions you’d get from the self-help section; from being able to plank for a minute to becoming an early riser to seeing Paris.
This one had travel, career aspirations, health and wellness, finances, hobbies, “adventures” (skydiving, waterfall…), and goals.
I guess my “issue” is that a bucket list to me seems more like new years resolutions or goals that are given way to long of a time-frame, your whole life, and no planning for achievement.
Writing a book is not on my “bucket list”, it’s a goal that I am currently working to achieve. I am working on my career goals. I do not have a travel bug and there is not an “adventure” I’d like to go on. I do want to visit all the tiny museums on the side of the road, but that’s a retirement plan (post is coming on that). I am presently working on myself physically and emotionally, I’ve even created my own mantra and recorded it so that I can listen to it on repeat.
The victim of the episode says he realized that-
“-You never get the whole bucket list done, you just keep adding things to it because every day there’s something new to amaze us. That’s how we know we’re alive.”
Maybe all these present goals are just bucket list items that I’m acting more quickly on or are more, time wise, attainable. And I will never not have something new I want to do. I guess what I’m saying is, whatever you want to do, whatever is on your bucket list, don’t wait. Don’t wait for your next raise or your next big birthday. I mean, don’t ignore your responsibilities, but don’t let your bucket least remain a dream. Save up for that trip, use your vacation time, live a little before it’s too late.
*If you enjoyed any part of this post, please consider liking it. If you loved it, please consider following me on WordPress. I also love comments including questions, advice, or a review of the post itself. Thank you for reading and best of luck in your adventures.*
National Novel Writing Month (November) is almost here! I didn’t follow through on my commitment last year and I really want to write my 50,000 words this time around. Something I completely missed last year was all the prep work and making a plan for my writing time. If you also want to participate this year, there’s still time to plan and prep!
NaNoWriMo wants you to be successful, so visit their Prep page for all the details. They’ve got a six-step process that started back in September (yeah, I had no idea either) but I managed to get a lot done in one day and some things, like complex characters, may develop as you write.
Develop a Story Idea (September 9-13)
Create Complex Characters (September 16-20)
Construct a Detailed Plot or Outline (September 23-27)
Build a Strong World (September 30 – October 4)
Organize Your Life for Writing! (October 7-11)
Find and Manage Your Time (October 14-18)
This is the six step process. What’s really great about NaNoWriMo is that they have lots of tools to help with each step. To develop your story there’s an exercise sheet where you use story lines from books you loved and make changes until you have a story of your own, or borrowed characters, news stories, or inspirational photos. For character development there’s a questionnaire, a long and detailed one, for you to ask yourself about your characters and make them multi-dimensional. They also have helpful explanations, examples, and sheets on outlining your plot and building a world/backdrop for your novel.
For everything you need all in one place you can download the full Prep 101 Handbook. It’s a little over 60 pages. I made a copy, downsized some images and changed font sizes, pulled the character questionnaire to print a few copies of that alone, and got the handbook down to about 20 pages.
After working through some of the exercises I finished the roller coaster 5-point plot! I prefer to work with a story board so after I finalized the plot on the roller coaster plot print out I threw it on index cards and a cork-board.
I need to invest in some more thumbtacks…
There you have it, color coded and outlined! Bottom left is the setup and inciting incident in hot pink, rising action is above it in maroon, climax is in purple at the top, mid-to-upper-right is my falling action in blue, and the resolution & end is in black at the bottom right.
I printed all the worksheets and plan to expand on my roller coaster five-point plot (above) using the 9-point plot. Then I’ll work out more details in the 27-chapter outline and the Save The Cat, and finally use the Jot, Bin, Pants sheet to create scenes and dialogue. I’d like to get through all of these steps by the end of the month, but my absolute minimum goal is completing the Save The Cat phase.
Steps five and six are about everything but the book planning. Figuring out how much you need to write in a day, in a week, and which days of the week and times of day to squeeze in writing time, and sticking to it, will help reach your goal. If you want to map it out yourself ob a physical calendar, they’ve got a print out and you can use stickers to mark your success. Organizing and maximizing your time will make it little easier to get in that writing time.
After taking the quiz I ended up with the following time frames and word count goals:
The Structure: 2 40-minute writing sessions every weekday, 6 hours of writing every weekend The Goal: 800 words every weekday, 4,250 words every day of the weekend. (If you’re shooting for 50,000 words.)
The structure and goal were a little off target for me so I made my own plan. Fewer hours on work days or days when I have plans. You can see my calendar and make a copy in google sheets to plan your own! Aim for 40 hours, 50,000 words, and 1250 words per hour. (I have about 46 hours just in case!)
(PS – I had to individually format each “hours” cell to have it be either a rounded number or have a decimal, so watch out for any partials being rounded up in view but not in value)
To maximize my time I am going to try to pump out the next few weeks’ (aka November’s) blog posts and have them pre-scheduled.
I also plan to do more meal prepping and have my husband handle the grocery shopping.
More than anything, the biggest help is going to be having my book on an easily accessible cloud platform (<- not sure I used “cloud” properly). I have my book on Google Docs and I’ll update my word count manually in the NaNoWriMo project page while keeping track on my own in my calendar.
Happy Prepping!
*If you enjoyed any part of this post, please consider liking it. If you loved it, please consider following me on WordPress. I also love comments including questions, advice, or a review of the post itself. Thank you for reading and best of luck in your adventures.*
iniverse 