Tuesday 25 February 2025: Falling behind

I did a lot of work at the weekend on the editing job and I finished yesterday’s blog post on Sunday so I could schedule it and carry on with the editing first thing without turning the computer on. I did that and it all worked properly. We had roast turkey for tea, but neither of us fancied a proper pudding.

First thing Monday morning, over my dirty cuppa, I shared yesterday’s blog post to BlueSky via the phone. I also caught up with emails and social media. I didn’t run any errands because I’ve dropped behind on my workload and needed to catch up on some of it. I have a short story due in on Wednesday and a novella due in on Friday. Plus, I want to get the editing job back to the author ahead of my hospital stay next week.

Everything went to plan until I sat down at the computer. I did this week’s diary, because I hadn’t done it last week, and realised that another story was due in on Saturday. I’d written January’s 12 Stories in 12 Months submission with this call for submission in mind, yet I’d completely forgotten about it. So I settled down to revise the January story. I added 500 words, which was enough for the lower end of the target wordcount, formatted it like a proper submission, printed it off and left it to cool for a couple of days.

Over our mid-afternoon dinner, the poet read through it to see how it had changed and if he could notice the changes. Of course  he said it was ‘even better’ than the original. He started to make a suggestion, but changed his mind saying it was fine as it was. Sometimes I take his suggestions on board and sometimes I don’t. But as he’d given me the denouement for this particular story he didn’t need to say anything else. 

I turned to the short story that’s due in on Wednesday and somehow ended up on Canva making a cover for the story I’ll be submitting before Saturday. I added it to the grid for this year’s 12 Stories in 12 Months graphic. It’s Story #1 so it went into the first space. And then I was updating the covers on the sidebar on here because today’s book cover changed, but I saw that I had the wrong bookazine cover for Words Worth Reading Issue Three. It’s the right story but the wrong version of the cover. 

So I amended the file in Affinity, once I’d located the covers file again, and then created the cover for the next bookazine too, as I already have a complete novella which is Stevie Beck’s actual debut. I added the 2 new bookazine covers to the sidebar and removed the rest because I don’t yet know in what order I’ll be releasing them.

These lighter nights are confusing me at the moment. It’s later than I think it is. And when I finally got around to looking at this week’s short story, I realised it was way past finishing time and tea was already on the go. We emptied the bins between us and the poet took the correct wheelie bin out for collection today. Then he started to stone cherries for a cherry crumble.

Today needs to be much better and I need to be much more disciplined. I don’t have an errand today, but I do have a lot to get through.