(Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay)
Tuesday 10 August 2021
The day did not start as late as I thought it would, but it did start later than I would like. These last-minute writing marathons have to stop. They’re simply not sustainable. Of course, it’s my own fault. I should just do my work when it’s scheduled instead of faffing.
Overnight, the ghostwriting instalment that I submitted was approved for payment and the contract arrived for Book 5 Part 4. This is the first time I’ve done a 4-parter and I have to do the blurb this time too as well as the bonus subscriber-only short story catch-up.
As this was a full, clear day between ghostwriting instalments, I started off by printing off a proofreading job. I already edited this book for the client and now the first proofs had arrived and I had the author’s notes to apply.
While that was printing, I transferred the latest ghostwriting date to Asana, and I also set about an old Wednesday writing prompts for Medium. Because I skipped a week last week, this week’s was a bumper crop.
Then, and also because I skipped a week last week, I did a slightly different Wednesday writing prompts post for the blog for this week. I did some handwriting work, but not enough to hardly count.
I’d kept the cold at bay that was starting to creep in on Monday night by taking Benylin, but by the afternoon, this was upsetting my stomach and I felt a bit ill. So I moved everything along a day on Asana, closed down the office and went to sit in the front room instead.
Here’s how Tuesday went:
- printed off proofreading for Yorkshire client
- printed off author’s revisions for Yorkshire client proofreading
- added new ghostwriting contract dates to Asana
- merged 2 previous Wednesday writing prompts and submitted the new story to Medium
- wrote and scheduled this week’s Wednesday writing prompts (362 words)
- handwriting work (74 words)
- moved everything along a day on Asana
- started today’s blog post (273 words)
Words written today = 709 words
Wednesday 11 August 2021
I was still so tired on Wednesday morning, from the previous Friday’s gig as well as Monday’s writing marathon, and also due to the upset stomach, that I ended up sleeping in. This was by accident rather than by design.
As soon as I got to my desk, I moved everything along a day in my physical diary to make up for finishing early on Tuesday. This is the benefit of building in wiggle room, and I still have time spare in between now and when my next ghostwriting instalments are due in.
I topped, tailed and formatted a short story and I submitted it to one of the Medium publications, then I topped and tailed the next one on the list to save time next week. After that, I finished Tuesday’s handwriting exercise and completed another.
Scanning down Twitter, I followed an ALCS link to the Save Our Books campaign. I haven’t been very sure what this was all about, but I decided to look into it a little. I ended up following the link to send an email to my MP in support of the campaign.
As I was completing my address details, I realised that we had yet to fill in our electoral registration form at the current house. So off I went to do that as well. Then I spotted one of my former lovely editors on Twitter, started to follow her, and she followed me straight back!
There have been a couple of Twitter literary storms that I’ve been watching this week. I ended up going down both of those rabbit holes as well whilst I was on there. When the poet arrived home I realised the time and closed it all down so I could do some work.
My last job of the day, therefore, was the client proofreading. I went through the author’s notes and applied changes where applicable, and explained to her any that weren’t.
Here’s how Wednesday went:
- formatted and submitted Pancake Race to Medium
- formatted a short story ahead of submission to Medium
- handwriting work (299 words)
- read up on some gossip on Twitter
- joined the Save Our Books campaign
- wrote to my MP
- updated our electoral roll details
- applied most of the author’s revisions to the proofreading
- finished today’s blog post (453 words)
Words written today = 752 words
