Thursday 3 July 2025: Steady as she goes

I had a good, clean shot at the day’s work yesterday. My planner was neatly filled in, with specific jobs against specific time slots, and with  two half-hour breaks throughout the day instead of two one-hour breaks. I’d got this!

First job was a brainstorming exercise for Assignment 2 of the 50 crime mystery prompts workshop. 

The second job was fleshing it into an outline for a short story. 

We didn’t have the assignment yet, but I took a punt that it would be the same, or similar to, the second assignment in the first run of this workshop. If Assignment 2 is much different, then I can still tweak it to suit and I have the rest of the week to write it. 

The third job was finalising yesterday’s blog post. As I’d done the wrapup and the hello posts for July on Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was going to do today’s roundup from Monday to yesterday. But the post was already quite long, so I ended it after Monday, created the image, and scheduled it all to post yesterday. 

Then I started today’s post. 

While I’d been scheduling yesterday’s post, I noticed the great novella challenge graphic and the wordcount meters in the sidebar needed updating. But I didn’t have any spare breathing slots and the day was already chockablock full. 

I didn’t have any spare breathing slots on Wednesday either, so I decided to just crack on with the plan and do the updates if I finished something early and was twiddling my thumbs.

The next job was pre-writing for Book 9 in the great novella challenge. It’s going to be Christmas at Whitehorse Farm, unless it grinds to a halt again. I’d done a lot of the pre-writing up to the end of the first Act, but I didn’t have any suspects, although I did have the roles. So I did some suspect work.

I have a two-hour slot allocated to the novella every weekday between now and the end of the month and I still had time to read through what I already had and tweak a couple of things. I tied the opening with the ending, and I added the motives to the interviews parts. 

The cuckoo clock sounded that it was 12 noon. So I put the novella away and went to make my midday breakfast, or brunch, or whatever it is I decided to call it. I also ate it at the kitchen table, rather than bring it to the desk.

My twisted knee was a bit better by Tuesday morning, but sitting with it bent for too long made it seize up. I had to remember to keep getting up and walking around, but I also had some anti-inflammatories, although I had to wait to take those with my midday meal as we’re not supposed to take them on an empty stomach.

Temperatures got so high on Monday that the big fan came in out of the garage. We have 2 tower fans, one of which is in the office, the other is usually in the conservatory. Both of the towers came into the bedroom Monday night, but I put one back in the office again for Tuesday morning and had it pointed at me for most of the day.

As I wandered through the house, I wondered about turning the big fan in the hall on again, but left it at just the one in the office until the poet came home from work. As it was a bit cooler, I thought we might manage with just the one in the office, but with it oscillating. No point having fans playing to no one and using energy while they do it.

Back at my desk, the next job was the short story I’d moved along from Monday. I had a nice, big two-hour slot for it, which meant a Pomodoro break in the middle to exercise my knee. It’s nice getting up and walking around the house when the windows are open in every room.

The dustmen had emptied the wheelie-bin but left it slightly across our drive. I went and brought it in so the poet didn’t have to do any jiggery poker to get onto the drive.

All I’d done on the story was so far was jot down all of the things I wanted to include to guide me to write the story, if I got stuck. Once I get started, I’m usually okay. But if I do get stuck, it’s good having the pointers to help get me back on track.

I started to write it, but I didn’t finish it, which means I didn’t have a story to revise the next day. This story needs to be done in time for the next bookazine, so I need to fit that in somewhere else now, between then and now.

The next job was to revise Catch the Rainbow. I stitched together the 3 parts I did for the great novella challenge it came to 66,000 words with them all added together. So that experiment worked. When in doubt, try writing something bigger in smaller, contained chunks. 

I still need to write a handful of scenes for this book in its entirety, plus an epilogue. Although I’ve made the prologue a single-chapter Part 1. I could make the epilogue a single-chapter Part 5. I think the words ‘prologue’ and ‘epilogue’ may cause some readers to think they’re not as important as the rest of the book. I know a lot of people who skip both. So single-chapter parts might make more sense.

I sent it to the printer, and then spent the next half-hour or so encouraging the printer along. It overheated and jammed a couple of times, then 10 pages from the end (of 180pp) (single-line spaced), the toner ran out. Fortunately I had one, but I’ve been loath to keep more than one in stock because the printer itself is one of those that dies automatically after so many printouts and we’ll be replacing it with a colour all-in-one laser. I don’t want to buy toner cartridges that may never get used.

And that was it. I ran out of day. I had a couple of jobs left over but I got through a lot and I did a lot.