Tuesday 14 Feb 2023: Valentine’s Day

Image by NoName_13 from Pixabay

The first jobs I did yesterday were more Vocal and Medium work. I still hadn’t had a response for the short story I submitted to Medium last Thursday despite the publication in question publishing quite a few other stories between then and now. As I’ve not had it rejected either, I can only assume that they’re inundated and with that many submissions, mine is likely to get buried even if it is accepted. So I’ll look around for another place on Medium to post fiction.

I actually added three items to Vocal, one on writing ideas and how to use them, the old birdwatching article I sent to Medium last week, and another short story. All three were approved almost instantly, although the writing one took longer than the other two.

When I add these stories, I don’t just copy and paste them across. I also have to add pictures, including different ones to those I’ve already used, I have to reformat it to suit each publication/community, and I have to rewrite the end matter at the bottom. So it isn’t a quick job.

I now have eleven stories on Vocal. I think we get a bonus when we publish ten stories, but I’ll see. I did get a bonus for having a featured or top story and we also get bonuses for other things on there. I’m not sure they pay better than Medium in the long run, but at the moment they’re a lot quicker.

The next job was yesterday’s blog post, which I hadn’t kept on top of. And then I started this one. Next up it was the ghostwriting, slow and steady. I refreshed my memory on what I’d written on Sunday and then started the next chapter, only to discover that I needed to check the newspaper I’d downloaded for the summer of 1814. But I couldn’t find it. I think that all the ones I’ve paid for are on a memory stick I haven’t seen since before we moved house. So I went online to check the British Newspaper Archive to look at it there, only to see that most of my newspapers were expiring either yesterday or tomorrow and I had to download them all again quickly. Most of them worked, but for some I was too late.

I worked late into the evening to get Part 3 finished, but at least it all went smoothly.

I remembered that the publication I’d targeted on Medium has a Slack thing, so I went and revived that to see what was going on. It seems there’s a massive backlog and they’re struggling to keep on top of everything. At least it wasn’t just me, then.

It’s Valentine’s Day today, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I want you all to know that I appreciate every single person who supports this blog and my work. πŸ’– I think we’re off out this evening for a meal at our favourite pizza place and then we’re going to the pictures.


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