(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
I ended up working at the weekend again. I’d like to say that once I knew the poet was going fishing, then I saved my work for then.
However, it was almost the other way around. I asked him if he was fishing, and when he said yes I thought Phew! Because I already had a lot of work in.
Saturday 11 September 2021
I’ve been trying to do some work every day on the magazine. Saturday’s task was go in and format all of the pages for consistency. Before Saturday, I’d added and formatted part 1 of the serial, the 1st of the series stories, and the archive story.
Now I only have part 1 of the novella to proofread, split and edit and the two short stories to write. But at least I have the titles for those now. Once these are all added, I’ll update the ‘contents’ and the ‘next time’ pages and I’ll draft the welcome letter.
It looks as though the monthly magazine will be around 55,000 words by the time it’s done. I’m hoping that’s thick enough to make it substantial, but not so big that the cover price remains affordable.
I could make it thicker by putting a longer novella in, 50,000 words instead of 25,000 words. However, I already have at least 6 short stories to write each month as well as the novella, and that’s not including everything else I do.
When my writing is earning enough that I don’t need to take in ghostwriting, editing or proofreading, then I might make the novella longer.
Another chore I’ve been trying to spend time on each day is the writing schedule book. I started this on Tuesday, adding in the to-do lists for the five project management books and the omnibus.
On Thursday, I added the magazine, filling in the detail for the first month, and leaving the remaining eleven months empty. And on Saturday I added in the short story-writing schedule. (This is how I now know how many short stories I have to write each month.)
I’m updating the to-do list on the phone as and when things occur to me, and crossing things off when they’re done. The to-do list on here is simply a summary of what’s on the phone. I still have the full-length books to add to the writing schedule books.
The other thing I did on Saturday was create a 12-project planner in Excel for the magazine and to update the 10-project ghostwriting planner.
For the 12-project planner I needed the poet to re-create my progress charts. I can do them, but by the time I’ve reminded myself how to do it, taken the time to do it, and made a few mistakes along the way, the poet could have done it a hundred times.
By the time I’d finished faffing, it was dinner time. So I did some reading while I had my dinner, and then it was ghostwriting book 6 part 4. Writing it was a little like pulling teeth and I had to keep doing other things just so the time wasn’t wasted.
I finally found out two things for the new website:
- How to add a follow button
- How to automatically share posts to social media
This means that I won’t have to use the newsletter now for a blog delivery service and already a few of you have also found the follow button! (Hello! And welcome back!)
Sunday 12 September 2021
We were supposed to be going out on Sunday to finish the filming for the alphabet adventurers. But the poet had already had a full day of ‘outside’ and I still had work to do. So we stayed home. He did the housework while I worked.
I faffed a bit on Canva creating a wallpaper for my phone and then another for my desktop, and I upped my kickstarter pledge a little as I thought it was worth the money for the pop-up workshops at least.
This kickstarter has 10 days to go and they’ve already unlocked their 4th stretch reward. I think they’re a really good idea, and if anyone’s wary of trying one, pledges start at only $5 for rewards, less if you just want to back something.
My one daily thing for the magazine was to add four book reviews, bringing the running word-count to 26,608. The poet fixed the charts in my 12-project planner, and I went in and re-coloured the bars on the graphs.
Another job I did over the weekend, but I can’t remember when, was to change the poet’s domain from Wordsworth Photography to Ian Wordsworth, and then I changed his website to read Wordsworth Media instead of Wordsworth Photography.
This little job took me hardly any time at all. It would have taken him a lot longer. This is what we do. I do things that I can do quickly, and he does things that he can do quickly. Between us we make quite an efficient team!
I finished reading the stories in Mystery Weekly Magazine, deleted it from my Kindle, and cancelled the subscription. I’ll buy it and read it again, but not every time. I don’t really have time to subscribe at the moment.
I managed a couple of chapters for the ghostwriting, on either side of visiting the mother-in-law, and then the new client ghostwriting gig landed. This one doesn’t start until today, though.
Today
I have a lot of client work to do today. It’s a short list, but a lot of work:
- finish ghostwriting (1) book 6 part 4
- write ghostwriting (1) book 6 bonus short story
- proofread history book for Yorkshire client
- start ghostwriting (2) gig
I’ll do the proofreading in between chapters.
