
So, at the end of Wednesday last week, Fallen Angel decided it didn’t want to be written yet. I’d made a start on the first chapter and managed 401 words. But I needed 15,000 words. I could still do it, I’ve written 16,000 words in a day before now. But it didn’t want to be written. The first Act was clear in my mind, but Acts 2 and 3 were still a bit of a blur.
Thursday
Therefore, on Thursday morning, I made the decision to push it to one side and see if there was another story that did want to be written.
I tried to open up some older Scrivener files to see what I had there, but they wouldn’t open and they wouldn’t copy over. I think everything current is already working fine, but the historic stuff might be a bit of a blow.
I’ll have Word and Office files for the stories, which will open I think. But I resolved to make sure I export everything in future every day I do any work on it all, and date it, so it can be opened on a different device. But typed versions will have to be copy typed now into the new Scrivener files. There’s probably a way around it, but I didn’t think I’d have time to do the research last week.
I went through my notes, outlines, brainstormings, and so on, and ended up with not one but two contenders: The Body in the Lake and The Body in the Woods. Both Stevie Beck cosy mysteries.
I got rid of a load of admin and repeat stuff, like sharing Thursday’s blog, moving this month’s finances over to my spending account, making sure the 12-project spreadsheet had all the projects on for this month, feeding the garden birds, unloading and loading the dishwasher, etc. And I finalised Friday’s blog post, which didn’t take long.
Then I had a bit of a brain murmur and went back to my portable hard drive in search of backups. And there I found all of my old Scrivener files and I could open them all. So that was a good job well done. I immediately transferred them to the desktop and they’ll be backed up to the Mac portable hard drive next time I do a backup.
Then I made a cup of tea and settled down to The Body in the Lake.
At the end of every 5-minute Pomodoro I took at least a 10-minute break, using the time to get up, stretch, walk around, and basically move my body. Oh yes, and eat.
By the end of the day I’d written 12,678 words and was aching all over. But I was more than halfway, and that felt bloody good.
Friday
Friday morning was spent feeding the birds, doing some laundry, writing up the January wrap-up and posting it, creating the February graphics, writing up the month ahead for February and scheduling it.
We started a 16:8 eating regime to try and flush out Christmas. By midday the poet was ‘starving’. I was still okay, but I did have milk in my morning cuppa. Apparently I can do a ‘dirty fast’, which allows up to 100 calories in total. A cup of tea with semi-skimmed milk and sweeteners is only 20 calories, apparently. So that gives me up to 5 cups of tea per fast. I will try and keep it down, though, and I started by filling a water bottle for each of us to leave on our desks.
I opened The Body in the Lake, January’s great novella challenge story, all ready to go. And then an email came in from NetGalley with shocking news.
They took great pleasure in announcing a ‘new way to read’ their books, but in fact they’ve removed the ability to read on Kobo readers, Nook readers, and any other readers that aren’t yet ready for the new LCP protected PDFs.
Who reads books in PDF these days? And what was wrong with downloading an ePub file? I can only guess that these other reader companies aren’t paying them enough. Or they want everyone to use their new app. But apps and websites are bad for the eyesight and not very inclusive.
Very many members have responded to NetGalley’s proud posts, with anger and with sadness. I suspect even more have contacted them directly. I certainly responded via several routes until NG sent me an email asking me to only report something once! I guess I was getting on their nerves.
I contacted my two favourite publishers on NetGalley directly to let them know why, if this isn’t fixed soon, I won’t be requesting their books again. But then I had to step away from it. I really didn’t need a distraction like this on Friday with the deadline I was up against.
We had a quick snack to break our fast, then I was back on with the great novella challenge. I worked until 7:30pm, but I added 11,850 words, bringing it to 24,488 words. In two days.
The weekend
I thought we were going to take the van out twice at the weekend, just to make sure the battery held its charge after we’d given it a boost. But we ended up just doing the shopping on Saturday and visiting the mother in law on the way back. Dean Smith acknowledged safe receipt of my great novella challenge submission for January.
On Sunday we waited until midday to have something to eat for our 16:8 thing, then we packed a small picnic and headed to the van, jump leads at the ready. It took us a few goes, but we got the van started up again. So we hopped in and took it for a good drive.
We ended up at Nostell Priory car park because we’re National Trust members and could park for free. We left the engine running while we had our picnic. And we turned around and came back. So far so good, but we won’t be completely confident until it holds its charge for a bit longer. So we’ve decided to take it out at least once a week and if we end up at Nostell Priory again, for example, we’ll do a short walk the next time and slowly build up our fitness.
We were toying with going abroad for our 10th wedding anniversary, but as we were out in Peggy anyway, we both agreed that we’d sooner stay in the UK. So we’re going back to Scotland, I think, for our wedding anniversary. Then we’re off to North Devon for the next break that’s over a week, to spread my parents’ ashes. And then the poet fancies a hop across the Channel to Normandy later in the year. In between, it will just be day trips or short breaks.
When we got home I made a rhubarb crumble for tea, as we’d finally been able to get rhubarb from one of the supermarkets. (The rhubarb capital of the world and they didn’t all have this in-season local produce.)
Monday
We both had dental appointments Monday morning, but we had a phone call at 8:30am to say that our hygienist appointments were cancelled. The poet still had a checkup booked and they called again to say that the dentist would do his clean.
I still went with him because we had to update our medical questionnaires and I had to rebook my hygienist appointment. I’m going back on 3 March, as I’m already booked in at phlebotomy that day and it will save me getting the car out twice.
Not long after we got home, I had a phone call from the hospital. My blood sugars were a bit on the high side, and could I go back and have another blood test so they could do a comparison. 😳 We said we’d get there before the end of the day.
I did some planning work for the month ahead, deciding to step back from the intensive publishing program and concentrate instead on finishing a few more pieces of work. I was stuffing too much into the planned day anyway.
I want to be writing up to 2 books at a time and a short story a week. Those 2 books can both be mine or one only can be a client edit/proofread, and my own books should range from 15,000 words to 80,000 words.
But I won’t be stopping at just the writing. I have to revise my own work too, edit it, proofread it, etc. And I have admin jobs every day as well. Plus I need wiggle room for the unexpected (such as yesterday’s extra trip to the hospital for a blood test).
I’m away with the poet for a few days next week and I want to take work that’s as portable as possible. Next week that will be the client edit (hard copy), some short story proofreading (hard copy), and Book 4 of the great novella challenge (I’m doing the pre-writing this week and hope to start the writing next week).
I caught up on blog work and did this week’s diary, then carried on with today’s blog post. We went out for the extra blood test and had the car washed on the way back. (We already had my car washed on the way back from taking the van out on Sunday.)
And then I set to on this week’s planning work for the great novella challenge.
Today I have Monkey Dust admin that I would normally have done on a Monday, and I want to spend a chunk of time on the client edit to get over the starting hump.
Busy stuff. I’m so tired of “improvements” being quite the opposite.
As far as who still reads PDFs, 90% of the paid book reviewing and the paid contest entries from various clients are submitted as PDFs here. A few of the books for review are submitted as epub. Otherwise, they’re print copies.
Have a great time next week!
I seem to be getting tired of anything and everything outside my control being foisted onto me whether I want it or not. Must be my age.
We don’t get pdfs. They’re too difficult to navigate. But at least I now know one person who reads them!
Thank you!