I must say, starting the working day an hour later during BST seems to be working. Although I’m often up around half an hour before the alarm (puppy…), this seems to give me a good grounding to the day. It’s like I get to relax for a bit before everything goes mad.
Yesterday started said 30 minutes earlier because the dog was just bored of still lying in bed. I’d already got up and fed him right after the poet left for another early start, about an hour before. By now he was ready to be up and about, and he was very fidgety. So I caved and got up.
Over my early morning glass of water I almost got completely distracted by reels on Facebook and I had to drag myself away. I allowed myself to watch just one, and that was Leah Hope’s 10-day post-op leg reveal. The rest I resisted.
I read a few chapters of my book marketing book, then went off to try one of the tips it suggests: follow authors you like or admire on Twitter. Only I didn’t do it on Twitter, I did it on BlueSky. I chose a couple of dozen but included things like Kickstarter or a writing festival page as well. Within a few minutes one of the authors had followed me back, which was nice and makes me like his books even more!
It was a quick housework session. I only emptied the dishwasher, saving the garden birds until I’d walked the dog, which would be after my midday breakfast. Then I was at my desk decluttering my BlueSky, my Medium and my Patreon of blog post links more than a few months old.
The premium story was scheduled to publish on Patreon at 11am, and I’d already received notification from Medium that they’d scheduled it to publish on Saturday. This is the publication that seems to know its own readers and always posts my writing prompts stories at the weekend. I shared the day’s regular blog post everywhere I couldn’t schedule it to, then I shared the premium post to Instagram and BlueSky.
As I was working, a bird flew into the office window and I didn’t see it fly away. So I shut the dog in and went to investigate. It was a female blackbird and she was sitting on the ground looking a bit stunned. As soon as I picked her up to examine her, she started to scream her head off. So rather than put her through any more unnecessary trauma, I placed her on the floor and after a wobbly start she flew away and over the tall hedge.
I made a mistake inside the house. I forgot to close the office door. So the dog was on my chair and on my desk, shouting at the window. I had visions of the glass of water on my desk being thrown all over my keyboard and my work, but he’d done very well and missed that.
Next up was republishing the next story, Dancing on Ice. I received emails from Kobo saying the first 2 were now live on pre-order and I’d already received emails from Amazon saying the first 3 were now live on pre-order. So once I’d uploaded Dancing on Ice everywhere, I went onto my Books2Read page and made sure the non-D2D retailers were on there for each book so far. Their own were starting to populate, but I had to manually add Google Play, Kobo and Amazon.
I had a quick breakfast, and then took the dog out for his walk.
The rest of yesterday was spent on the editing job. It’s still not finished, but we’re nearly there! Maybe today…
It’s St George’s Day today. We should go all out like the Irish do on St Patrick’s Day to celebrate, but then we’re all lumped together as racist. I don’t care. I’m English, and proud to be British. Have a great day everyone celebrating!
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
Busy day, with interference from nature! So funny that the dog likes your chair. I often have to fight Tessa to sit at my desk.
Enjoy St. George’s Day!
Oh my goodness, he’s up and on the chair and snaffling something from the desk before I even realise I left the chair sticking out. He loves to get on Ian’s chair and watch me or look out of the window, and he does the same when we’re eating at the dining table, jumping on a spare dining chair in the corner from where he can see everything. It’s funny but annoying at the same time.