Chapter 17: Week commencing Friday 29 April
Friday
I’m writing much of this week’s diary in retrospect and I can’t for the life of me remember what kept me so busy on Friday. It was supposed to be ghostwriting, yet there is nothing ticked on my project planner.
I’m having a few teething issues with the project planner, most or all of which are user error/ignorance. I’m still learning. I’d found out how to tick off a job and leave it on the calendar. It changes colour when it’s been done, then it fades out when the next day comes along.
However, looking at my project planner for Friday, there is nothing. Nada. Zilch. My projects had started to disappear once complete, and I wonder if there’s been an update whereby I had to save my view again.
I can see that I was still reading B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton. I can also tell from my NetGalley project that I downloaded another book from NetGalley, which means I was approved for another. (222…)
But I know I was busy because we didn’t do the shopping on Friday as I was still working… ah yes, I remember now.
The day was blocked out for ghostwriting, but I was struggling to remember what I’d written before. I don’t like writing in instalments as I think the continuity suffers. I had a few goes, but gave up in the end and opened up the previous instalment I’d sent off.
My eyes were very tired for some reason. I think we’d had a couple of disturbed nights, thanks to the pets. So I opened it up in Word rather than Scrivener (I create it in Scrivener, but deliver it in Word), and I asked Word 365 to read it out loud to me.
A couple of times the poet came into my office to see me with my feet up on the desk and he thought I was slacking. I was, however, working Very Hard.
I think I did some editing too and I think the editing job has vanished off my project planner. But such is the importance of writing it as I go along rather than relying on memory.
The Weekend
We had another 3-day weekend. Saturday was spent doing the shopping and visiting family. I finished reading B is for Burglar.
On Sunday we went for a drive to the Hope Valley. It was our wedding anniversary so we did plan to eat out. However, we also had a picnic with us and we ended up eating the picnic. (The plan was if we ate out, we’d have the picnic at home for tea.) When we got back, I started to read Pirate Queens for NetGalley.
Monday
On Monday, another Wordsworth Short was published.
Wedding of the Year is a story I wrote for an assignment on a writing course. The tutor liked it, but I didn’t send it anywhere. Like last week’s, it does appear in two of my own anthologies, Twee Tales Twee and Twee Tales More.
You can find all of my books on the BUY MY BOOKS tab on the blog, or you can go to www.books2read.com/DianeWordsworth.
As it was another bank holiday, and while we didn’t want to be out all day due to the poet having to go away for most of the week for work, we did go for another drive. This time we headed north of the River Humber, and this time we bought a sandwich and a chocolate bar at a petrol station.
I carried on reading Pirate Queens for NetGalley.
Tuesday
Tuesday should have been more ghostwriting. However, we hit a bit of a snag, which I can’t really go into detail about. Their end, not mine, but I’m hoping the solution we thrashed out between us fixes the issue. It means some slight rewrites, but nothing I can’t handle.
Also on Tuesday, another book arrived from NetGalley… (223.) I wrote Tuesday’s blog post, which was really Monday’s but late. And I did more editing work. So far, these jobs are still marked on the project planner as ‘done’ and they’ve faded out.
I continued reading Pirate Queens for NetGalley and then spotted a call for submissions for pirate stories… I chose my next 2 books to read for pleasure (a John le Carre and a David W Robinson) and I ensured my next 2 NetGalley books are loaded onto the Kindles.
Wednesday
First job Wednesday morning was Thursday’s portable garden blog post, basically saying that there’s nothing to say this week regarding the portable garden. I’ve started to do the daily competitions again, because they really do only take 10 minutes once I’ve caught up…
… Oh yes, that’s another thing I did on Friday. I allocated an hour or so and caught up on the daily competitions, so that I was up to date. Once I’m up to date, they take literally minutes. So now they have a 15-minute slot on the project planner, just to (a) remind me to do it, and (b) tick off when it’s done. (Ticks are a great motivation for me.)
So, next job was the 15-minute slot for daily competitions.
I squeezed in some more editing and fired off an email to the editing client, who responded only a short while later. Then it was over to Canva to update my ‘current reading’ and ‘publishing this month’ graphics.
While I was doing that, another book landed from NetGalley. (224.) At a rate of one a week, I have enough reading material now for the next 4 years… and that doesn’t include books I’m reading for pleasure. I’m so glad I’ve added these to the work schedule now.
I also finally started this post, which took longer than necessary as I tried to remember what I’d done up to the end of Tuesday… With all of that out of the way, I started to tackle those rewrites. I also read a few chapters of Pirate Queens.
Thursday
I had to watch out for a delivery first thing Thursday morning, so did a lot of my social hour work on the phone where I could keep an eye on the front drive. The delivery guy is becoming quite the regular now. He was only here on Wednesday with a delivery for the poet.
Once at my desk, I spent about 5 minutes on the daily competitions before adding the latest book covers to the Publishing Challenge gallery post (not published yet). Doing this brought the draft post back to the top of the list so I don’t have to go searching for it next time. I’ll update this as I go along.
My next job was to prepare the next short story for publication. While I did so, I opened up Monday’s Publishing Challenge draft post and wrote down the process as I went along. It took longer than usual, but at least it meant that I’d already done one of Friday’s jobs early – Monday’s Publishing Challenge blog post.
Then I updated this post before cracking on with more rewrites and then more editing, as well as continuing Pirate Queens.
Today
Today is more of the same. We don’t currently have anything pencilled in for the weekend, but you never know. I don’t plan to work, but if I want to, I can.
Have a fantastic weekend!
Note: I’m not including links because they take forever to edit out when I’m preparing the final version of the book for publication.
