Tuesday 13 June 2023: These storms keep missing us

I don’t have a ‘my power board this week’ post this week. This is because it looks exactly the same as it did last week. And it looks exactly the same because, quite frankly, the plan went to pot when I woke up with a streaming cold last Monday. I had Tuesday off and much of Wednesday was spent on probate. Then the rest of the week was spent on that editing job I’ve been trying to shake free of for ages.

I did it, though. The book went back to the author fifteen minutes after midnight on Sunday. I probably got to bed by about 1am, and when my alarm went off at 8am I could have quite happily switched it off, rolled over and gone back to sleep.

However, I had a yoga class at 9:30am and now that I didn’t feel as though I was still contagious, there was no reason not to go. So I got up, fed the animals, medicated the dog, had a cup of tea. You know, a nice, relaxed start to the day. Yoga was much better this week and I’m wondering this week if the instructor is a little bit shy, or a bit awkward when she meets new folk.

She’s on holiday for the next two weeks, and she didn’t know if the leisure centre were arranging cover. I checked at the desk on my way out, and they didn’t know yet either. But the girl asked if she could call me once she’d found out.

I got home less than 10 minutes later and threw all of the doors and windows open, promptly drawing the curtains over those windows that let in a lot of sunshine. It was going to be another hot day. The fans went on and I got a cold drink, and was at my desk at 10:55am. Not bad for an 11am start.

Social media and emails were the first things I caught up with, as I hadn’t had a proper breakfast. (I had two Alpen Light bars in the car when I got to the leisure centre.) At about 11:10am the house phone rang. It was the leisure centre letting me know that they do have cover for next week, but it’s a stretch class and not a yoga class. I need to find out what a stretch class is likely to consist of before booking for next week.

An email was waiting for me from the author of the Taliban book, answering all of my questions… but he’d answered them in the file and forgot to attach the file. I emailed him straight back. Then I quickly liked and shared a Facebook post for Diane’s Gig List.

I read through the previous day’s blog post and spotted loads and loads of typos. That’s because I wrote it up in between editing breaks over the previous few days and was too tired on Sunday night to check through it all. I made the corrections and twice had to remove the updated post from Buffer to stop it posting everywhere again.

Then I went over to the secret sugarholic blog, finished this week’s post, and scheduled it for today at 9am. I checked this time too. I definitely scheduled it for today at 9am, so it should be there about an hour after this one posts.

By the time I’d done that, the email had come back from the author with the file attached. So I went through, made the changes, and sent it off to production. (Yay!) I fired off an invoice. (Yay!) And I sent a further email to the client with an update.

I did some quick Monkey Dust admin. And then it was time for dinner. Over dinner I read a few chapters of the current NetGalley book.

Because I’d already spent morning time on client work, I decided to concentrate on my own work in the afternoon without beating myself up over it. I started by catching up on the last of the motivational Monday videos I’ve already watched. I’ll choose the next one to revise before sending off an assignment.

An email came in from the editing client, thanking me for the work and acknowledging receipt of the invoice. I’ve confirmed with her that they’re my only client now, and she said there will be another book on its way to me by the end of the week. She’d just sent one of mine to print, so I could now destroy my audit trail of hand-edited copies, and the one I just submitted was winging its way to production.

I jumped ahead to a live online workshop I’ll be studying along with in July to collect the reading list… and it’s not a reading list I’m itching to read. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the authors, their writing, or the books. They’re just not me. And at least one of them is a horror story.

I’ll be using an Amazon gift card to pay for the books I don’t already have… and the Amazon gift card is one I ‘earned’ playing games. There’s enough on there to pay for three of the four books, with time to earn enough to pay for the last one as well. I’ve paid for this class as part of a lifetime bundle, it’s not one I got free on a kickstarter.

So I need to buckle up and just go for it… and just make sure I’m reading the books in broad daylight, preferably with the poet holding on to one of my hands. I’m a proper wimp when it comes to horror stories…

I went through my WiP drawer and discarded two projects that are done and I hauled out two: Diary of a Pussycat (revising) and Catch the Rainbow (typing) with a view to finishing work on at least a chapter each.

I opened up Diary of a Pussycat first and took the same opportunity to create the new month word-count spreadsheets I’d all but abandoned for this month. If I’m working on my own stuff, I want to know how much I’ve written. I revised one chapter and added two lots of exercises, adding 516 words to the mix. Current tally = 41,407 words.

Before the storm clouds started to rumble in, I went outside to take some photographs of the garden for this week’s garden post. Then I came back in and started on Catch the Rainbow. I typed one scene and added 896 words. Current tally = 12,429 words.

Tea was ready and I’d already showed the poet my reading list for the July workshop. He laughed at the horror story and said I could sleep in the office when I started to read it. (Nightmares.) There’s a recommended film on the reading list too, a classic, and I mentioned that to him. By the time tea was ready, he’d downloaded it and we started to watch it over tea.

And the storm I’d been watching? It swerved to the left again, and missed us. Again.

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