There were a few memes/quotes around this year trying to bolster productivity and motivation like this:

I would imagine they came from places of good intentions, but really, all they did was make people who weren’t productive more ashamed of themselves. Even in this blog I tried to, maybe not bolster your spirits because I’m a little too blunt for something like that, but I didn’t want you to waste the year away either.

So whether you were able to write a book a month, or you’ve barely been existing, there’s only one more month left of 2020, and you have the chance to make the most of the last four weeks of the year.

What do I have planned for the next four weeks? I’m not calling it quits quite yet, and I have a book to finish up. I’m at 63,000 words, and I would love to write another 20k in the coming two weeks before Christmas. One of my big 2020 goals was to learn a newsletter aggregator, and I even went as far as to set up an email address for this website and to sign up to MailerLite. I haven’t watched any of the tutorials on how to use that product yet, and I do not have a newsletter sign up link yet. I still have four weeks to accomplish this, and I need to so I can put the link the back of this WIP when I publish it. I guess I’m balking because then I have to learn how to use Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin, and while I miss going to school, studying up on those platforms is not something I’m looking forward to. On the other hand, once I learn them I won’t have to do it again.

On Black Friday, Mark Dawson bundled three of his courses and I purchased them, including the one by Suzy K. Quinn on how to write a bestseller that I’d been drooling over for a little while. I don’t have a timeframe on when I want to get those classes done, but I have started Suzy’s course, and it will be very interesting as well. I like studying what goes into a bestseller–what makes books popular. I’m taking almost a scientific outlook to that course, picking apart the elements of a bestseller. Always keep learning. You never know what will help you later.

I’ll keep up writing this blog through the month of December (I’ve already seen some 2020 recaps, but I’m not there yet). I rarely go on Twitter after I announced my break, and I don’t miss it. I miss a couple of friends on there and in 2021 I may start a new and more intimate account. I’ll lose big followers like Jane Friedman, Lindsay Buroker, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and Robin Cutler among others whom I have gotten to know over the past five years. Or I may just leave it alone as Twitter wasn’t giving me anything constructive anyway.

I did try to stay motivated during 2020, but like everyone else, I went through some rough patches. Not that my life changed all that much. I’m an essential worker, which means I never had to worry about my job or where rent was coming from. My only change there has been being able to work from home, an option that hadn’t ever been available to us before. I’m surprised by how much I like it, but it could have something to do with the cat company on my desk.

My sister and I used to have Tuesday movie night, but we had to change it up and we watched the Marvel Universe movies in order because I had never seen them before. That turned into a regular Sunday thing and it kept us occupied for a few months.

I’m decorated for Christmas and my cat loves to sleep under the tree:

This post does sound like a recap after all, but I’ll go into all my highs and lows at the end of the month.

There are four weeks of 2020 left. I’m going to make them count, and I hope you do too!

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