Woke up yesterday to a big blue sky, sunshine, and frost. The rain seemed a distant memory, until I went out later and saw the aftermath of some of the flooding. The dogs let me sleep until 7:30am, but then they wanted out and their breakfast at the same time. We all went back to bed for half an hour, but I had to be up again and showered before the roofer arrived at 8:30am. He was already there as I stepped into the shower, 15 minutes early. So I made sure all the curtains were still tightly closed!
I didn’t have quite an hour for my quiet time and dirty cuppa as I was already running late by now. Off I went for my hospital appointment, leaving the dogs guarding the house and the roofer climbing all over it.
At the hospital, as usual, the car park was jam-packed full. I was slowly driving around looking for a place when suddenly a man stepped out in front of me with his wife and son and he started to walk really, really slowly. I was about to roll my eyes when he turned, grinned at me, pointed over a line of cars, and indicated I follow him. I still had to get around that row of cars to the other side, but he waited until I was almost upon him, slowly nosing out of his space before driving off and letting me have it.
What a lovely start to the day.
I was raving early for my appointment. I don’t know how I managed that at all. But even then I didn’t go in until 10 minutes after my appointment time. Which meant I’d incurred a car parking fee. And the payment machine I used was broken as it wasn’t recognising anyone’s registration plates. I guesstimated that I’d been there for just over half an hour, which put me into the 1-hour fee slot.
Before I’d even gone in the poet had called to say he was on his way home from the south-east, but he’s a long way away and still had a long drive ahead of him.
Anyway, 24 down, 6 to go…
When I got home, the roofer reported in on the dogs’ behaviour. They’d sat there quiet as church mice watching him, until a dog barked over the back and the puppy barked back. The house wasn’t trashed either.
It was almost brunch time when I’d let them out and everything. So I made my breakfast and another cup of tea and took it to my desk. I’d already drafted yesterday’s blog post and posted it to here, to Patreon and to Medium. All I had to do was choose a picture, illustrate them all, then post them all live. And then I started today’s blog post.
Next job was fiddling with my schedule over the coming weeks. I have 7 new jobs in from the Upwork client, 3 of which need to be returned in the next few weeks. One next week, one the week after, and one the week after that. (They’re all very short, and the first one is uber-short.) I also had the current client edit to fit in, plus the next 2 months of 12 stories in 12 months, as this schedule work took me into March.
The next project management book is in the mix too, but I had to delay the start of that one by 2 weeks. That’s easy enough as I just took the first 2 weeks and changed the date to the 2 weeks following the original end of the project, rather than change the date on all of them. (There’s a block of time every day for the duration of the project.) I do need to get this book written and out there, so I can crack on with Books 4 and 5.
After that, I opened up the short story I started the day before in my Scrivener short story master file. I’d written just under 400 words and it needed to be 1,200. So I threw caution to the wind and started typing. At first it came up short at just over 1,000 words, but it didn’t take too much for me to get it up to 1,200. I gave it a quick read through, then uploaded it to 12 stories in 12 months, the first of the new year.
I finished a new short story! And a longer one in the process.
The next job was to revise a previously written short story ahead of sending it off to an open call for submissions on Friday. This was a Marcie Craig story and Number 4 in her short story series. One more, and she can have a collection of 5 stories published.
The final job of the day was my first foray of the year into the monthly dates writing prompts I’m running on both Patreon and Medium as premium stories. I’d already published the first part of the introduction, but for January I also wanted to throw a few ideas into the mix so people who want to join in have something to aim at.
I got as far as the end of the first 7 days before running out of time. This is such a time-consuming job, but I do enjoy doing it. It’s quite therapeutic and it throws up loads of ideas for my own stories. But because of the time it does consume, that’s why I’m charging for it now. In the future, I hope to have a book, a writers’ guide, for this method. But for now, I’m still building up to it all.
I called it a day and closed down. But I didn’t post today’s blog post until this morning. Tomorrow it’s the first month-end wrap of the year. (Already?!)
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
An excellent day. I hope the flooding’s not too bad in your area. I’ve seen some footage of various areas, and it’s scary.