The only thing I really worked on on Friday was The Secret of Whitehorse Farm. And even then it was only pre-writing. Everything else was on binder work in Scrivener and I updated my 12-project spreadsheet. I didn’t get around to writing a blog post, so I’m correcting that this morning.
The poet had a number of Teams meetings and while he was doing that I had my headphones on and was watching videos (about pre-writing a cosy mystery). At 3pm I had to nip out and get new hair.
To save time, the poet did the butcher run, and then we both went to do the weekly shopping. We couldn’t do it on Saturday as we had a dog coming and it was her first time staying at our house. We didn’t want to leave her on her own until she was more used to us and the house.
An email arrived from the editing client with the next lot of pdf proofs. These were the amended proofs I’d only sent the day before. Wow! The designer turned those around quickly. I’ll check those today or tomorrow and get them back to her. If we can get the book published in January, we will, and I won’t be the blockage if we don’t.
(Publication was brought forward from April to January as the author arranged some publicity events for January and February.)
We had chorizo and rice for tea, but it didn’t fill us up and we were snacking all evening. The dog arrived at about 9:30pm, so we stayed up a few hours longer than usual until she settled down a bit. She did fret for a bit, and she was up and down, but she slept until 4:20am when she got me up to let her out.
The poet took her out for a walk first thing, as that’s what she’s used to. And I played with her for a while in the garden when they got back. It didn’t take her long then to start playing by herself, and she settled down a lot quicker on Saturday afternoon/evening. For a quiet and timid dog, she wasn’t at all bothered by fireworks going off, even when she was in the garden.
I had my first comment for the short story I posted on Wednesday, for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS, and when I went to see it in full, I noticed not one but two typos in the story. D’uh! That’s what happens when I don’t have time to proofread it before posting it.
We had a couple of hours in the office, during which time I did more work on The Secret of Whitehorse Farm, this time adding a good chunk of words to the mix. We had hotdogs for tea. (Saturday was always jokingly referred to as ‘starvation day’ when I was growing up, as it was fend-for-yourself-day, so we keep that alive once a month by having our own starvation day.)
The dog helped us. And she let us sleep in until 8:30am Sunday morning.
This time the poet played with her in the garden. Then we put her in the car, went to collect the mother-in-law, dropped the dog off with her humans, and met the rest of the family for Sunday dinner. When we got home, we watched highlights from the Sunday morning Remembrance Ceremony in London.
I had another comment on my story. I need to spend some time this week choosing up to four to comment on myself.
Today is, of course, Remembrance Day everywhere. We watched a YouTube video by some camper-vanners who recently visited Ypres, and we’ve decided we’d quite like to do a war grave tour in the van ourselves next year. This list of ours is getting longer and longer…
I forgot to publish a short story for publication today, mostly because it wasn’t on my TickTick schedule but also because I was busy last week shifting that proofreading job and getting started on The Secret of Whitehorse Farm.
I’ll be adding that to the schedule as the outstanding stories have already been published by a market that seems to be desperately republishing everything they’ve ever published all over the web. I withdrew all of my outstanding stories from this market and I know that the contract I signed didn’t include this latest clause. New contracts have apparently been sent out to other contributors, but I haven’t received one…Hmm, wonder why…
Therefore, I don’t believe my stories will appear. But to make sure, I’m publishing them myself as quickly as I can, as standalones and in Words Worth Reading, so at least mine are up there first. But I want to get these ones published before Christmas before settling down to my routine of:
Words Worth Reading ⟶ standalone ⟶ collection(s) ⟶ Medium.
Also on the agenda today:
- brainstorm story for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS (December)
- The Secret of Whitehorse Farm
- weekly short story market work
- this week’s diary (I didn’t do that on Friday either)
- tomorrow’s blog post
Sounds like you had a good weekend!
It was quite relaxing and recharging.
Sounds like you’re doing well, old friend.xxx
Thank you! xx