Bad week – I managed to produce little more than two thousand words. And this is entirely owing to my situation and the demands of our homeschool and our business.

As the kids grow older educating them becomes more demanding, not because of anything inherent in education or in homeschooling but because of the hoops through which the system in New York demands they jump. We are reduced to the role of trainers, teaching our performing lions a repertoire of tricks, and education becomes a circus. There’s a word for that – ridiculous.

I’m not resentful of the time I spend with them. This morning Zizi (my eleven year old) wanted to know if there was a difference between ‘sardonic’ and ‘sarcastic’ and that prompted her siblings to jump in with their opinions on this question. We keep a library version of the New Oxford  Dictionary, Third Edition in their common room, on its own stand and I encourage them to use it often. My purpose here was to avoid reliance on the Internet as arbiter of truth.

Now that’s education and in this homeschool it’s always on. In this context hoop-jumping is a huge distraction.

Business is business and money is necessary. I can only hope and dream that I can work my way to the place where writing is my business.

I did manage to spend some time researching the collected wisdom (on the Internet) on marketing, with the result that I’ve posted the first chapter on Wattpad. It’s a test of the idea of the book and I’m hoping for feedback, either in comments on Wattpad; here on my WordPress blog; or in private email to neiladaniel@yahoo.com. I intend to design my own cover and have posted the first design choice along with the chapter on Wattpad. I intend to do at least two more, to give myself some choices and to allow people to help me decide on the final version of the cover. For convenience here it is.

I would be super grateful if readers of this blog would comment on my effort here.

On to next week then, and stepped-up production to make up for the setbacks. Thanks for the support and until next time, give it your all, and be well.