The end of the summer holidays

It’s a sad, but true statement – the summer holidays are almost over.

I really enjoyed this month off because I did get my last book done and my CP helped me edit, so that right there means I had a productive break.

So now I’ll be heading back to school on Tuesday (Monday is a teacher day, so there’s nothing for non-teachers to do.) I’ll be back in my same classroom, with a different teacher and a different set of kids. At least I get to be there on the first day to see how another teacher handles it. These are things I was never taught during my Florida teacher training.

I’ve decided not to take the Maths and English courses that I signed up to do this term. Since the tutoring didn’t do much, I’m going to get my own study books, teach myself the test, then sign up for the appointment-based tutoring sessions again. I still don’t understand why England is so against people making their own decisions about things: I can’t just sign up to take the Level 2 tests when I want to. I have to have a tutor pre-assess me first, evaluate my scores, then decide if I’m ready to take the real test.

These are the kinds of things I dearly miss about the US – the freedom to do what you want, when you want. There’s no middle man to go through.

But, anyway, I’ll be writing as usual during this school term, but I’m thinking I’m not going to do NaNoWriMo this November. (Though, I’ll probably end up starting it because it helps me get going.) Since I finished my last manuscript, I’ve not known exactly where I want to go next. I usually finish a book, then want to move on to something else immediately and forget about the old project. I’m impatient like that.

So that’s my small update on what I did over my summer break. (Finished a book, went to London, and read a lot – I dearly love being left to my own devices.) Hope you all have a wonderful autumn.

The #AmWriting Birthday Party

What is #amwriting. I always figured it was short for “I am writing.” But our leader of the community, Johanna, writes in the early morning. I was afraid for a while that my afternoon and morning tweets were null and void.

Luckily, the #amwriting community for all of us who are writing – in the morning, noon, evening, or too late or too early to really know.

I started using the hashtag a while ago when I was first embracing the self-publishing world. I was surprised how many indie (and traditionally published) authors there were on Twitter. It was intimidating and frustrating at first, but then I realized that with the #amwriting hashtag I can easily tag any random questions, word count updates, or worries about editing. It works so much better than having my updates (or, random whining, if you will) getting lost in the sea of Twitter updates on my followers’ timelines.

So, thank you, #amwriting community, for giving me a community of like-minded writers who are just a hashtag away.