Hi All!

Hope you're having a good day / week / month? As I'm writing this, the sun is shining on my little corner of the UK, temperatures are in the warm-ish range (though the natives would argue it's "bloody hot"!), and I'm getting on with all the tasks I'd been pushing aside for the past three to four years (busy day job + severe burnout + trying to write and publish novels = bad combo).

Book news:

I have re-published the paperback for my first YA novel, Beyond the Threshold (click here for more info), and it should be available everywhere you buy paper books by the second week of May! It's really exciting for me, because it's something I'd been wanting to do for months but...."see intro".

Life news:

I've been playing around with a different way of working, and it seems to be really working for me (while really exciting for me, it's killing my friends because I won't shut up about how much I got done!).

This most likely won't be viable for most of you, but sharing anyway:

I work in blocks of weeks - that's it (kind of). Put simply, instead of trying to do all the things every week (then beating myself up because I couldn't, or I was too tired, or I had procrastinated, even if it was sometimes productive procrastination), I "theme" my weeks.

Lately, I've set aside one week do do my website and newsletter, another week to re-publish my first YA paperback (see "book news" above), another week to do house-stuff*, a week was set aside as a catch-all random publishing stuff, and I'm setting aside next week as a do-nothing week (that's in addition to my do-nothing Sunday).

And it's been great! I'm still tinkering, but I'm finally seeing the number of tasks I have in Todoist starting to reduce, and more importantly (for me), some of the old ones disappearing.

*In case you're curious, that week, I fixed my loft insulation (been meaning to do it for 9.5 years), fixed my freezer that kept icing up (for at least 8 months), fixed my toilet flush (16 months in the making), got a better credit card, applied for a new business bank account (related to the day job) etc, etc... there is still stuff to do, but essentially, I prioritised by focusing on things that would save me money and/or improve my quality of life!

I'm done rambling for today, I hope you have a great rest of your day / week / month!

Love, Sophie