Tuesday 5 September 2023: A slow start

I had so many good intentions but when I woke up on Monday I was still really, really tired. On Saturday night I went to bed on drugs as it seemed as though I was coming down with a cold. I slept like the dead and it was the poet who was woken up by the dog two or three times. On Sunday night, I was drug-free, and so it was me who was woken up! Ah well. Back to normal.

I spent the entire morning faffing. I surfed social media, played a game or three, read a short story. I did hang out some washing I’d done overnight, and I did put through a couple of washloads that could go straight into the tumble dryer. But I couldn’t even be bothered to make myself a sandwich for dinner and plumped instead for, erm, a Krispy Kreme™ doughnut and two pieces of apple and blackberry traybake.

By the time the poet came home from a long-haul day-only work trip, I’d forced myself into the office where I wrote up yesterday’s blog post, started today’s, shared the gig list, and did some Monkey Dust admin. I think they’re cutting their gigs right back next year as they’re all struggling now to fit things in around them, what with grandkids and grown-up kids living abroad coming to visit and the like.

It suits us too, because we’re hoping to have more free time next year to do stuff outside of Monkey Dust. Our social circle is pretty much the same as the Monkey Dust circle and we’re not having time for day trips or weekends away or fishing or walking or anything. Even going out to see a band is a bit like a busman’s holiday.

And, of course, it means less work for me to do. The poet has pretty much taken over booking gigs from me leaving me to do the publicity and the social media. And the gig list is well and truly handed over to the new managers, who have actually started to do what I was hoping to do by making followers go to the actual gig list to see what’s on instead of having it all spoon-fed to them on Facebook.

I spent some time re-ordering the Kindle Paperwhite I cancelled a few weeks ago. My own Paperwhite really is on its last legs. It isn’t holding its charge, the independent 2g connectivity is now obsolete, it’s running out of memory, and some of the pixels have blown.

My biggest concern with the new Paperwhite was that it wouldn’t read mobi files. But I found out that it will read mobi files, they’ll just be classed as documents now, just like the books I get from NetGalley. I had visions of years and years of books being out of my grasp, although I can still read them on the apps and on the Kindle Fire.

When the battery wouldn’t charge at all on Sunday, while I waited in the car with the dog for the poet to go and buy stuff from the shops, I made my mind up that it needed replacing. So I re-ordered the new Paperwhite, in denim blue, with a new blue cover too. I believe it’s only showing four books at a time now on the main screen instead of six, but the poet’s already does that and perhaps I just need to suck it up and get over it.

I started to watch the motivational Monday videos again, from where I last left off at the beginning of August, and I was reminded that I’m supposed to have a story magazine reissued on 1 October ahead of the new-look story magazine in January, for which I have to write a new novella and something like four new short stories. (I’ll carry on serialising Night Crawler and I’ll still have a story from the vaults.)

So, a new chore on my list this week is to learn, once and for all, how to do at least the cover in Affinity. I’d like to do the whole magazine in Affinity too, but realistically I don’t think I’ll have time with us already having the last week of September off.

When I finished watching the relevant episodes, I located and printed off the Word file for Words Worth Reading issue 1 so that I could go through and revise it and perhaps indicate where I want to add illustrations or anything else. I added it to my longer works planning spreadsheet. I have 17 days in which to revise 143 pages, choose and place any illustrations, and learn how to do the cover.

I was delighted to see that in ‘next time’, I already had listed:

• Night Crawler part 2 (already written and prepared)
• The Ace of Cups (the second in the Tarot series, already written)
• another story from the archives/vaults (already written, I just have to choose it)

That means I only have to write a new novella and up to four new short stories, if I can’t find any stories I can use that are already written, such as the ones I’ve been doing for 12 Stories in 12 Months or the one I had accepted by The People’s Friend. If that one has been published by December, I can use it in Words Worth Reading Issue 2.

Then I gathered together everything I have for The Beast Within. I’ve used this as a writealong in book 2 of the project management series. When book 5 is done, and the omnibus is available, I want to be able to give away a copy of The Beast Within with it, in a final box set.

So, while I had a bit of a slow start, and I certainly didn’t do everything I’d planned to do, I think I came away from the day with some good work. We’ll see how it all pans out.

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