It may have been a holiday weekend, but it was a busy one all the same.
For most of Saturday I was glued to the telly watching the coronation. I’m not that bothered about the religious stuff, but I do enjoy a good parade as well as a marching band or two, and nobody does it like we do.
On Sunday we took the mother in law out for a Sunday dinner at a local restaurant in one of our closer beauty spots. Remembering I was on a diet now, or at least watching what I eat, I had sea bass with a spring onion mash and steamed (to within an inch of its life) broccoli, and I had sticky toffee pudding with custard. Both of those together were lower in calories than the poet’s roast beef dinner, and probably, added together, were still lower!
When we got back we had an hour in the garden. Then I sat in the device-free conservatory doing some writing work.
Yes, folks. You read that right. I worked on a bank holiday weekend, and by choice!
I transferred the last three outlines already written from the general, touchy-feely notebook to the short material ‘outlines’ exercise book so that they’re all together. A short story and two RTEs (Reader’s True Experiences). I also scribbled down the story idea that came to me the other week.
I ummed and ahhed for a bit about where to write the first and second drafts of the short pieces, in longhand. The poet offered me a 10-part project notebook of his, which would have worked well with my 10-project spreadsheet and 2-ring binder of the same. But I thought it was too good for messy first drafts and I gave it him back. He’d bought it for something very specific and not really used it yet.
I have these lovely spiral-bound notebooks for all of my work now. The A5 spiral notebooks are for planning novels and the matching A4 spiral notebooks are for the first drafts. But, again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to use the A5 books for messy first drafts. However, I did have a mismatched pair that I haven’t used for anything at all so far. So I decided to use these for first (A5) and second (A4) short material drafts.
They are all very pretty books and, so far, the matching ones are working quite well.
All of my touch-feely notebooks will now be used for brainstorming, ideas and other drafts, such as blog notes. On Sunday that’s where I wrote the short story idea that came to me the other week.
Once that was all up to date, I turned to my 10-project 2-ring binder with the short stories in and removed the one I abandoned that was due on Sunday from the #2 slot, then moved everything else along by one.
Finally, I settled down to make Autumn Fayre a bit longer so I can send it out to market. It was already in the #1 slot of the ring binder anyway, even before I moved everything along. I needed to find another 600 or 700 words to make it fit either of the two markets I had in mind, and I found just under 400. I’m hoping it will get a bit longer when I edit the typed version, but it may go straight to the shorter of the two markets if I can’t do it. I don’t want unnecessary padding.
Monday was the bank holiday and we went out for another meal before going to the pictures to see Guardian’s of the Galaxy.
Today I have to look at this week’s diary, but we’re also off on a road trip later on when the poet goes to see one of his sites to talk to the night shift.
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