Wednesday 17 December 2025: Monday & Tuesday

This post also appears on Patreon.

I should really be on holiday now, but I promised an author I’d have their book back to them by a certain date and, while I’m running a little behind schedule, I still want them to get it before Christmas. I’ll carry on working until it’s done, but I do have other things I wanted to fit in this week during the holiday time, so I’m trying to do those as well.

Much of Sunday was spent on planning work. This carried over into Monday too until I ran out of things to schedule in. At the time of writing, that’s Monday 9 November…

I went through and put all the public holidays in the calendar first and then I jotted down the month ahead blog posts and the monthly wrap-up blog posts. Where none of those fell on a Monday, I alternated publication day with book review day.

The book review days are blank after the immediate next book to review as I don’t know yet the order in which I’ll read and review the books. But the publication days are filled until 9 November. And that doesn’t include all the novellas I wrote for the great novella challenge, nor any novels, nor any writers’ guides beyond the project management books.

That doesn’t give me a lot of time left in 2026 to publish them. But I do have to have a novel written by September at the latest, so it’s ready to start serialising in the bookazine in October.

But I went as far as I could.

Planning isn’t the only job I want to get on top of for 2026. I also want to at least get to grips with some marketing aspects. So during my quiet reading time, when the dogs are sleeping or during dinner breaks or when the working day is over, I’m not only reading the review book but I’m also reading a book on marketing for authors. 

During the holiday-but-working hours, I finished the hard copy edit of the client job I’m doing. And I caught up on the Patreon short story I should have posted on Saturday. One day this week I need to allocate time to get the next few stories scheduled.

On Tuesday morning I received an email from the client edit author asking after his book and I was able to respond with where I was. The plan, then, on Tuesday, was to get the screen edit done and the book back to the author. It all depended on how well, or not, Word behaved.

I disconnect from the internet when I’m using Word now and use it as a standalone word processor. I also only use it for this client now. And I still detest it. But I can’t get the tracked changes to work properly between Word and LibreOffice Writer. The changes work, but the comments disappear. So I have to transfer the edits from the hard copy to a Word copy.

I updated my reading spreadsheet with the new marketing book, then I cracked on with the client screen edit. Or I would have done had Word not thrown another hissy fit.

Honestly, have I mentioned how much I detest Word? Why does the world rely so much on this piece of garbage?

First of all, reference/end/foot notes, whatever you want to call them. Word wouldn’t let me delete one and delete the reference number too. So yeah, it deleted the notation and the reference for #3, but it kept the number in use but with a line through the note. Then when I tried to create a replacement note, it used the next one along and not the next one in order now that the original was deleted, if you get my drift.

Knowing I don’t have a lot of time for this crap, I stepped away from the notes thing after a few goes and carried on, resolving to remind us all to do it at pdf stage or something…and then it wouldn’t let me add a comment. It let me add loads of comments to that point, and when I looked at comments inline, there were three empty comments, I’d hit the button so many times.

It had already thrown another hissy fit about tracked changes in general, not letting me see comments or changes in balloons or even inline. I’d got over that, or so I thought. But no, it had to change its mind again and stamp its stupid foot.

I am so over Word. I do wish the rest of the world would keep up, rather like they’re suddenly apparently doing for 2026 by ditching smart devices in favour of dumb ones. When tech takes over, I’m still amazed that other folk wonder why we bother trying to resist.

During this time I’m also still attending hospital three times a week, we’ve been to the vet, on average, once a week for the past 3 weeks, and I’m still having dog play time when I can go outside. Ah yes, and I’m also still doing that creative writing study I started in November.

I think I’ve been busier during this first week of my so-called holiday than I am when I’m actually supposed to be working! At least I’m getting a bit of a lie in while the poet’s off as he takes over the morning shift with the animals. He sometimes does the night shift too, if the puppy wakes him up instead of me.