Snow!

The view from my office window on Thursday morning.

I was very happy when we got up on Thursday morning to see that the snow I’d ordered, and had been promised, for about the past 3 weeks, had finally arrived.

It looked very lovely, and it continued to snow for the rest of the day.

I’ve had a good and solid working week, plodding away at the various projects. Every day I’ve been able to work on everything except for The Beast Within.

Any down-time I’ve had has been spent researching locations and facts for the ghostwriting gig.

Tuesday

I finished proofreading the February magazine from Hong Kong by the end of Monday, but on Tuesday morning I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was sure I’d forgotten to tell him something.

Once I suspected I’d missed something, I sent him an email from the mobile phone. It was 6am in the morning, and as they’re about 8 hours ahead of us, I wanted to flag it before he sent the magazine to print by the end of the day.

As soon as I could, I checked. And yes, on a page that had several omissions or typos on (the only page in the whole magazine, in fact, that did have any errors on), there was just the one item that hadn’t made it into the feedback. I was able to check the file first thing and get the information to him in time for him to make the change. Phew!

The ghostwriting was slow-going, but I was already ahead of the chapters with my word-count. So when Chapter 5 came up shorter than the others, I didn’t beat myself up too much about it.

The rest of Tuesday was spent on research.

Wednesday

Wednesday was more of the same, but Chapter 6 was a good length again. I’m trying to keep them around 2,000 words each, but as Chapter 4 was closer to 2,500 words, Chapter 5 was left at around 1,500 words. And Chapter 6 was back to the usual length.

An editing job landed from India, but I didn’t get around to it on Wednesday. And then the March magazine arrived from Hong Kong for editing!

However, when I started the proofreading job for the Yorkshire client, I noticed that there were several inconsistencies.

The publisher does have a specific house-style, although it does change sometimes with each editor or handler. Generally, we stick to the house-style where we can. But if, say, we usually have authorize instead of authorise, but an author has started out with authorise, then we go with that. It’s whatever comes first.

So when this book had prince of Wales instead of Prince of Wales, for example, I just ran with it. But when it started to chop and change, I decided to go back to the beginning, choose one or the other, and then go with that instead. (Apart from in previously published extracts.)

That meant that all of the pages I’d read so far had to be read again. But at least it was quicker this time around. However, by the end of my stint on Wednesday on this, I still progressed by an additional 18 pages.

It also meant that I ran out of time before I could get on with the two editing jobs.

Thursday

Thursday dawned bright and beautiful with a blanket of snow, and I found myself gazing out of the window several times as yet more snow continued to fall.

The first job I did was to proofread another 53 pages. I wanted to make a dent in that as it needs to be finished by the end of Friday. I finished roughly half (two chapters) before breaking off for something to eat.

After dinner, the job I did in the middle was the editing job from India. It was less than 900 words, so didn’t take very long.

Then I went back to the proofreading. I wanted to clear the 100-page mark (in total), and I reached page 103.

By now it was dark, but I also wanted to get some words ghostwritten. So that was next on the list.

However, during Thursday I lost my computer for a while. It was being sluggish and so I repaired AVG, which usually works. But when it restarted, I’d forgotten that Windows was waiting to do an update, and it jumped on in there as soon as it saw its chance. While the computer was taking its time, at least I had some proofreading to be getting along with.

And so I printed off the articles that came in for the Hong Kong magazine, just so that I had something productive to do in case the computer hangs again. I set those to print while I did some writing.

Today’s plan

I have the March magazine from Hong Kong to edit today. And I have the first ghostwriting instalment to finish and submit. If I get chance, I’ll also see if there are any more jobs in from India.

Have a great weekend!