My Summer in a Nutshell (2020)

I have decided it would be fun to do seasonal updates, so here is an overview of my summer—as in the season, not the school year’s definition. Instead of June, July, and August, I’ll be looking at June 20 through September 21. 

This summer was definitely a summer of new things for me. In this post, I’ll go over the biggest things that happened for me this summer, some writing updates, and also my favorite art piece. 

Highlights

I wrote a novel! More on that in Writing Updates. I also read a lot of books, which you can find some of in this post.

We had a Bible study on Esther. This was the second summer I co-led a virtual Bible study for the younger girls at my church (including my sister), and it was super fun. I did a series of blog posts on it too!

The college research and PSAT preparation has begun. It feels super crazy since I didn’t even think about these things very much before this summer. I think it marks the start of a very exciting phase of life for me. There’s a lot of uncertainty around both of these things, but I’m looking forward to seeing what God does.

My braces are off! What has it been, two years? It is quite a relief to have them off, even though I wear retainers now. The retainers are a lot nicer than braces now that I have gotten used to them.

I turned 16. O_O Very crazy, since I still relate heavily to my 13-year-old self. My sweet 16 was simple but very fun. It included playing Risk, eating blueberry muffins, reading Harry Potter, having a cinnamon roll cake, and re-watching both Monster’s University and Hamilton.

And I started Driver’s Ed! This summer, I started doing Driver’s Ed online, which means I’m getting closer to getting a permit and actually driving! It has been going very smoothly and quickly, though I haven’t been able to do as much since school started.

I entered my Junior year of high school. Unfortunately, we can’t meet for co-op this semester, but I have been enjoying an art class, my dad’s government class, and several subjects through UC Scout, including AP Literature. AP Literature has a teacher so I can get college credit for it, but the other subjects I’m doing through UC Scout are independent. My virtual schooling has definitely kept me busy compared to my somewhat laid-back summer, and I have been playing with my schedule a bit to adjust.

So, yep! This summer was filled with new things (not to mention the 2020 craziness of the virus, protests, and fires)!

Writing Updates

This summer has been very exciting on the writing side because I wrote my first novel! I’m calling it Senses until I can come up with something better, and I wrote it in the first 22 days of June. (Read this guest post to see how I did that.) I really love its characters and story, but as you can imagine, it has many, many typos, so I will be putting it away for now. I may do a post with some drawings and quotes related to it in the future though—what do you think?

About Booker Bunny and the 99 Captives: I am still editing it (very slowly) and planning to share it with y’all! My goal is to finish polishing it up to print out for myself and share with family and friends by the end of the year.

I have also started outlining a new project called All These Voices Not My Own. It is about a girl with the power to mimic others, but who can’t find her own voice. I don’t really have a solid plot for it yet, and it is going pretty slowly, but I’m hoping to finish the outline soon so I can write it!

My Favorite Art Piece of the Summer:

I got a neat drawing tablet for my birthday that I can hook up to Photoshop, and since I watched Monster’s University on my birthday, I felt inspired to draw this scene. I think this is one of my most detailed drawings ever, and I’m very happy with how it came out.

What Do You Think?

What did you think of my summer overview? Should I keep doing seasonal updates? How was your summer? What was new for you? What did you accomplish?