Nothing much to report. Which I suppose is good?
We're almost done with the second week of our $400 week for everything but bills budget. It seems to be going well!
It's almost refreshing in a way to have limits. It makes me more mindful, and it keeps extraneous stuff and purchases from entering the house.
We do have some CC debt to pay off from December, the month of crazy and Christmas wherein we always overspend, but with the budget, it should be gone by the end of the month, before I incur any interest charges.
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I'm back on the wagon and nearly finished the the second novel in my Salt Creek series. Phew! I'm learning to write faster and better drafts.
It took me about six months to write book 1, then about five more years to edit it and revise it 5 more times. (In my defense, I had work and two fresh babies.)
Book two, I started in October, and it will likely be finished next week. (First draft, that is). The revisions will likely go more smoothly, as my first draft is a much more coherent story. I guess you do learn by doing!
I also downloaded a writing productivity app called 5,000 Words per hour. It's free. It really does work. It's basically a stop watch. You write in sprints, to see how many words you can get down on paper in X amount of time. It certainly has helped me focus, and made me feel less guilty getting out of my chair to do other things before my 2,000 word count goal was met.
So yay for free productivity apps!
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The only bad part about writing more is I'm not getting as much exercise! Boy, my fitbit is like "what happened??"
Writing more= sitting more. Boo. I'm sure all of your in the fitbit challenges with me will cut me some slack, right? 
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I'm back on Swagbucks, and have already banked about $40 in Amazon cards. I had some old points lurking there, I made a purchase through their portal (stuff I was going to buy at the store anyway), and did some videos,polls, and earned some search points.
So, yeah. It's a lot of time and work, but that's basically free money. Once my CC rewards hit, I might actually be able to buy a new record player on Amazon for free!
I have so many great albums that didn't make it to CD or digital music, and I've missed listening to them since the record player doesn't work. (Been repaired twice. Didn't last. Boo.)
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I'm also planning to do the mini 52-week savings challenge. In my piggybank. For next December's Xmas money. I haven't started yet. I know I know,but I will download the chart today and use the spare change in my purse to keep up. I swear. I will.
Off to a decent start...
January 12th, 2017 at 07:09 pm
January 13th, 2017 at 01:46 am 1484271978
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January 13th, 2017 at 06:53 am 1484290391
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January 14th, 2017 at 10:54 pm 1484434456