Diary of a Tiger: Wed 26 Oct 2022

Chapter 48: Wednesday 26 October

For the second day on the trot, I made it to my desk by 10am, and it didn’t even involve having to get up and go out at the crack of dawn. What actually happened was that the poet had gone off to work and I realised that we hadn’t put the bin out. So I had to throw some clothes on and take the bin to the road. By the time I’d done that, I didn’t really feel like getting back into bed. So I got up.

The storyline landed from Ghostwriting Client #3 (GW3), and an email came in from Reedsy asking me for a few tweaks to my new profile. But the morning was spent prepping for NaNoWriMo, and also organising my workload for the next 6 – 7 weeks.

I have client work to finish this week (GW1 Book 11 and a book to hard-copy edit) as well as start (GW3), and I still have 2 short stories to work on this week. But I’ve pretty much decided on my workload right up until Christmas, which is great, really.

I always used to work around 3 months ahead, and looking at this upcoming schedule, it’s heading towards 3 months ahead. Perhaps I’ll get back to that situation sooner rather than later.

Anyway, from yesterday to this coming Monday, then, the current workload is as follows (blue =  my work; green = client work; red = other):

• write & submit GW1 Book 11 Part 4 of 4
• write & submit GW3 Book 1 Part 1 of 6
• copy edit history book
• NaNoWriMo prep work
• brainstorm short story: They Did It Wrong
• outline short story: They Did It Wrong
• ultrasound appointment
• write and send October newsletter
• prepare & publish Poppy Day
• drop poet’s car off at garage
• write draft 1: The Curse of Tutankhamun
• write blog post daily
• reconcile diary daily
• weekly backup
• next week’s diary
• collect poet’s car from garage
• Monkey Dust gig (Monkey Dust are in my ‘clients’ folders, but gigs double-up as ‘social’ too)
• publish Book 54: The Bonfire Party
• publication day admin
• Monkey Dust admin

I had a good think about NaNo and what I’m going to do, and I’ve decided that I need to finish the project management books as soon as possible. So I’m going to be a NaNoReBel and I’ve scheduled in Books 2, 3 and 4.

I don’t have Book 4 finished on the schedule. It’s more likely that Book 4 and Book 5 will be finished in December. I really would have loved to start a new novella, Lady Matilda Investigates, but I have to be realistic and Book 1 in this series is already selling. If I don’t finish the series soon, I’ll lose those readers and any potential credibility as a result.

There’s another short story in the mix as well, The Mystery of the Marie Celeste, but I’m not making any concrete deadlines for the short stories as it depends on how the other work is going.

On Monday it’s a normal work day, then from Tuesday until the end of the month, i.e. throughout NaNo, as well as the daily and weekly stuff, I’ll be working on only the following:

• NaNoWriMo
• GW3
• editing

That planning, scheduling and decision-making took up most of the day. Then I sat and read through the synopsis of the new ghostwriting job. I went and collected my NaNoWriMo participant badges and shared them everywhere, and I changed my project from the Regency mystery to the writers’ guides.

I created a new template in Scrivener based on the new job, then created the new job and transferred the synopsis over. I imported it as a Word file and then copied and pasted the relevant parts to the relevant places, using the double window facility.

A parcel arrived that the poet had ordered – a new hall stand – and when the poet had finished putting it together, I helped load it with coats and shoes, hats and leads, etc.

And I kept half an eye on the new prime minister and his cabinet throughout the day.

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