Words Worth Writing

4 August 2023

STICKY! A bit about me

Note: I’ve split this out from a previous post so I can add it as a sticky to the top of the page. Apologies to all who’ve already read it! About me I started writing in 1985. I wanted to write short stories for magazines, which I did. And I even sold a few. Right from the off, which was...

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2 October 2023

Monday 2 October 2023: Publication Day!

It’s publication day today for the rebranded and reissued Words Worth Reading. When it originally came out in October 2021, it was numbered issue 1. This time it’s been numbered issue 0. Words Worth Reading is my new quarterly fiction collection. In the near future it will include at least two brand-new short stories, a brand-new novella, the second part in...

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30 September 2023

Saturday 30 September 2023: September wrap-up

We had a week off at the end of September but before we broke up, I didn’t have time to write up the wrap-up. In any case, I did plan to do some work while we were off. However, the magazine took a lot of time and effort and turned out to be the only thing I worked on during...

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22 September 2023

Friday 22 September 2023: Where’d the week go?

Whoosh! And another week went by, just like that… How can it be Friday already? Well, actually, it’s still Thursday for me as I’m writing this yesterday. Even so… Yesterday started with me printing off the three lots of additions the author has sent, post-first-proof-pdf, for the client edit. I negotiated an extra fee for the extra work, for which...

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21 September 2023

Thursday 21 September 2023: A bluff old cynic? Moi?

We’re both full of cold at the moment and the dog woke us up several times during the night. I still managed to get up on time, though, which was a small miracle, and only half an hour after the poet left for work. I have to say, the dog doesn’t wake us throughout the night because he’s ill or...

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20 September 2023

Wednesday 20 September 2023: I made a magazine

I was up early again yesterday but instead of getting to my desk earlier, I was embroiled in house sale stuff that’s pretty much down to solicitor incompetence. I can’t go into detail here. Instead I bombarded my sister with a load of ranting texts, which she laughed at. She needed cheering up. She’s leading a walking holiday and there...

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19 September 2023

Tuesday 19 September 2023: A new gadget!

I spent much of the weekend trying to focus on what work needs doing when. I spent a lot of time last week learning how to publish a magazine in Affinity. The first part of the week was learning how to make a pdf. The second part of the week was learning how to export the pdf so that it’s...

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18 September 2023

Monday 18 September 2023: Learning a new skill

Thursday and Friday last week were both spent learning. I learned how to create a magazine pdf in Affinity and while I still have a lot to do before the end of this week, I’m feeling a lot more confident about it. The ebook will be issued in the same way, I think. The pdf will be available to paid...

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14 September 2023

Thursday 14 September 2023: Priorities

“Who are you and what have you done with my wife?” That’s how the poet greeted me yesterday morning when I bounced out of bed at the crack of dawn with him. He was off on a long-haul drive across t’hill (over the Pennines). It was 7am, so not that early. Even so, it was Very Early for me. However, since...

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13 September 2023

Wednesday 13 September 2023: Still tidying books

I seem to be spending less and less time on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) just lately. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m not sure what I’m doing instead. I’m still tidying the books I uploaded to Google Play Books, deleting duplicates or failed uploads, and replacing any I’ve changed, such as found a cover instead of the generic ones and...

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12 September 2023

Tuesday 12 September 2023: Online workshops

The first thing I did after hitting my desk yesterday morning was, well, hit my desk. It was so untidy I took a picture of it to remind me not to leave it like that ever again. It really has a negative effect on me and is something I’ve always disliked in all my working years. Perhaps it was brainwashed...

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11 September 2023

Monday 11 September 2023: Anatomy of a messy desk

So this was the sight that greeted me when I went into the office this morning. I can’t stand an untidy desk and I can’t work at one. But this is how I left it on… Wednesday last week. Yes, Wednesday. And not a single item has moved. Why? Because I fell down a complete rabbit hole and stayed there...

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6 September 2023

Wednesday 6 September 2023: Ticking jobs off

At the end of the day on Monday I dug out each and every notebook or piece of paper or printout that has anything to do with The Beast Within. I stripped out the writealong parts of Project Management for Writers: Gate 2 – Who/Where? and saved them in their own file. I printed that off too. By the end of it...

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5 September 2023

Tuesday 5 September 2023: A slow start

I had so many good intentions but when I woke up on Monday I was still really, really tired. On Saturday night I went to bed on drugs as it seemed as though I was coming down with a cold. I slept like the dead and it was the poet who was woken up by the dog two or three...

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4 September 2023

Monday 4 September 2023: Publication Day!

After a solidly busy day on Friday doing all of my planning work for the month ahead and my wrap-up work for the month just gone, we also had a stupidly busy weekend. I got through a lot on Friday. I brought all of August’s spreadsheets up to date and I created all of September’s spreadsheets. I decided on the...

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1 September 2023

Friday 1 September 2023: The month ahead

I love September. It’s the start of new beginnings as far as work is concerned, the start of a new working year for me. Because I’ve been busy with the proofreading job, I’ve not done a lot of work this week. Today was finally all the planning work for September, and some of the wrap-up for August. I’m only planning...

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31 August 2023

Thursday 31 August 2023: Back to work + August wrap-up

It feels like a long time since I was last here. That’s what having a holiday does, plus coming back to two days of solid work on one job. We had a great time in Whitby. I don’t have the photographs yet, but as soon as I do I’ll send out a newsletter. Ideally the newsletter needs to be for...

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18 August 2023

Friday 18 August 2023: Onward, Whitby

Here’s the pre-holiday roundup I promised on Wednesday. Tuesday I didn’t do any work on Tuesday. After a very rough night with the dog (and I was at home with him on my own this time), I stayed in bed until 11am. He was awake every single hour at first, fidgeting or wanting to go out. He settled in to...

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16 August 2023

Wed 16 & Thu 17 Aug 2023: Proofreading

Today and tomorrow (Wednesday and Thursday) will be wall-to-wall proofreading, and proofreading is the ONLY job I’ll be doing. We break up tomorrow (Friday) for a week and while I’m still waiting for materials to come from the client that will need proofreading, I’d like to get the book at least done before we go on holiday. And it’s a...

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15 August 2023

Tuesday 15 August 2023: I published a boxed set

I may have had an early start yesterday, but it didn’t necessarily follow that I did everything I needed to do. Firstly, I dropped my car off to be serviced and had a lift back to the house. When I got home, I changed out of people clothes, had breakfast and a cup of tea or two. I did all...

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14 August 2023

Monday 14 August 2023: Flying off the shelves

First job Friday morning was a trek down to the doctor’s to collect a repeat prescription. It’s less than five minutes away, on foot, so I was there and back in ten. Once at my desk, I decided to catch up with some submissions work. Harvey’s Festival is a short story I wrote for a prompt for 12 Stories in 12 Months....

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11 August 2023

Friday 11 August 2023: Workshops and courses and books, oh my!

I have no idea what happened to Thursday. It was there, and I know I did stuff. But it seems to have vanished into a puff of thin air. I’ll see what I can do… I know I had a quick whizz through my courses on Teachable to see if there were any more free codes to other workshops on...

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10 August 2023

Thursday 10 August 2023: A morning of writing

For the second day on the trot the poet was up early and off on a business trip. On Tuesday he had to drive south to the midlands. Yesterday he had to cross the Pennines to Manchester. Both days I thought I might end up going back to sleep and waking up at 10am gone. Both times the dog had...

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9 August 2023

Wednesday 9 August 2023: Catching up

Catch up time again yesterday. This time revising a pop-up workshop on when things don’t quite go the way the readers/viewers expect and how to build that into your writing. It’s one I’ve watched three times now, and I think the penny is finally dropping. One day soon, I hope to put it all into practice. Despite starting my diary...

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8 August 2023

Tuesday 8 August 2023: A fragmented day

The weekend went by in a bit of a blur. Not because of anything in particular. I just don’t feel like I even had a weekend. We were up early on Saturday because the poet had an early start for a gig that night. Because I’d spent ALL of Friday on the mockups, I hadn’t done a meal plan or...

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7 August 2023

Monday 7 August 2023: Making mockups

I think I blinked and missed the weekend… I had so much to do on Friday, and yet I spent ALL of it making mockups. I had a look at Affinity to see if I could still do them now that Covervault has closed down, and I found lots of tutorials on YouTube… but I have the updated Affinity v2.1...

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