Monday 17 June 2024: Seem to be getting there

Friday morning began with the client edit pdf proof landing. This has also gone to the author and to a proofreader. Once we’ve all had a look, I’ll consolidate the proofs and send it all back. But it won’t be this week as I’m already full. I’ve scheduled it in for next week, but next week’s pretty full as well. I know they’re waiting for this one, though. So I’ll squeeze it in – probably next week. That’s where it is in the schedule for now.

The arrival of the pdf proof prompted me to raise my invoice for this work, so I did that next. I found out that I can add something like ‘things to do today’ to my TickTick and mark it with a red flag, and I’d done that for this particular chore. I would have got around to it at some point on Friday, but as I’d been prompted, I did it and ticked it off.

I also noticed that I don’t have to open my entire monthly calendar in TickTick to see what’s on the schedule for the day. I can just choose ‘today’ from the main menu and it leaves it open at that all the time. The chores are colour-coded still, so I still get that touchy-feely pretty-colours hit. I like to use the full calendar for when I’m moving things around and transferring them to my diary, but the ‘today’ will be a big help.

I opened up my desktop Kindle to make sure I’d downloaded all of my latest books, then I did my weekly backup. I copy across my Kindle library too, to make sure I don’t lose anything. Books have slipped off my Kindle when I know I’ve bought and paid for them, and they’re not on my account on the Amazon website either, so I can’t resend them. So now I make sure I back them all up at least once a week.

Sometimes I get a message saying I’ve reached my maximum download limit, which, of course, I knew nothing about when I bought the books. And sometimes I get a message saying the download is on too many devices and I need to delete it from one of my devices. Again, something not made clear at checkout. But sometimes books have disappeared completely, and I have no idea why that happens.

And people really wonder why I like to convert them to epub and keep them in a separate directory…

I read through my brainstorming for the 3 of wands story and stared at the birds in the garden for a bit while it percolated. I don’t really like working on a story in a few days. I prefer to spread it out over several weeks, giving it time to cool in between. But as I’m still trying to get on top of my work, I’m doing the 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS in one week, and I’ve had to do this story in one week.

I couldn’t have done it any sooner because we didn’t get the brief until a week ago yesterday, Sunday. The target word-count is 3,000 – 7,000 words. However, in her interview, the editor kept saying 3,500 words, which made me think that might be her preferred length, her sweet spot. I didn’t think I could fit a murder into 3,500 words, and there was a murder in my brainstorming.

This is what I was chewing over while my backup ran. I also hung up some washing and put some more washing through. And I washed my hair and had a cup of tea. That’s how long my backup takes these days.

There’s still something dodgy going on with this blog and notifications and the like. I’m supposed to get an email every time someone makes a comment. But often that email is coming in hours after the comment has been posted and I’ll also find that there are other comments too that haven’t been forwarded to me. The Jetpack thing seems to be a different product. Perhaps there are a few teething problems with it.

I checked the site health and saw 3 then 4 then 5 then 3 then 4 issues. It changed every few seconds. I checked the first two, as they weren’t changing, and made the fixes, I think. The third one was an email problem, apparently. So I followed the link and fixed that – or I thought I did. It kept on flashing up as an existing issue. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind still to look into it all deeply, so I closed it down and pegged it for another time.

Next up, I did this week’s diary, which was really easy as I’m only in today. I brainstormed my story for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS. I went back to my short cosy mystery, deciding that the storyline didn’t suit the 3 of wands at all. Instead, I’ve given it to the knight of wands. I went back to 12 STORIES, and did a full outline. Then went back to the cosy for more brainstorming. The plan was to work on that one at the weekend.

I fired off a message to the owner of DEADLINES FOR WRITERS regarding my 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS, asking if I can send this month’s story on Monday or the following Saturday. Our deadline is Wednesday, but I may not have an internet connection and I do know that some people have submitted early or late before.

The editing client acknowledged and processed my invoice.

I did some pre-writing work for THE HAUNTED HOUSE HOTEL, getting my exercise book ready to grab and go and take with us when we travel. And I called it a week.