Tuesday 4 November 2025: All good intentions

By last Thursday morning, I had all good intentions of being caught up at least a little bit. But then I couldn’t even remember to schedule Thursday’s blog post on time. I’d missed it Wednesday evening and was all set to share it first thing in the morning. Oh dear. I finally managed it after midday on Thursday!

The morning routine is taking a bit longer now, with 2 dogs to feed, 1 dog to train not to dive in straight away, same dog to train not to wolf it all down then go and steal the spaniel’s food. All while making myself a cup of tea. The birds didn’t get fed this time, let alone the dishwasher get emptied or any washing put through.

There was an electrician coming after 1pm, and we’d decided that the poet would be on dog duties Thursday evening while I went and did the weekly shopping. I wanted to get the house and me in order way before the first of those 2 appointments. 

At 10:50am a van pulled up outside just as the puppy missed one of the training mats and the spaniel was shouting at the van while I did clean up duties. I thought, surely he’s not coming here…But, of course, he was. The electrician was more than 2 hours early. I pointed this out to him, with good nature, of course. He was here to do something for us after all. He checked his schedule and I was right. So we both decided perhaps he should slow down if he was 2 hours early.

At noon, he was still here. I guess he took the challenge very seriously. 

Another mad hour. Now it was time for my midday breakfast, another cup of tea, and half a Weetabix for each of the dogs with a spoonful of honey and warm water on. It’s good for their coats, apparently. Making them nice and shiny. I used to give it to my third dog, Roly, as long-haired coats benefit. I don’t know yet what it’s like on a wire-haired coat as I never did it with Rufus. 

And, of course, I had to go through the same training ritual as for their breakfast. 

Electrician finally finished at about 12:50pm. He’d been here for 2 hours, had replaced one broken security light and its power source and repaired the one that shorted the electrics in the rain the other week. He came in to use the facilities, and he had a play with both dogs, one after the other, being a spaniel human himself.

While he was here, I did at least get Thursday’s blog post up. And I shared the Diane’s Gig List post on FB – always a nice, quick tick, although sometimes I do have to dig deep or go in search of it, thanks to the FB algorithms not showing everyone everything they wish to see.

Another quick and easy tick was proofreading Snowbound. Well, I say ‘quick’, but it took longer than I thought it would as I had to also provide biographical lines and I couldn’t get the biographical lines to format properly. In the end, I tacked them onto the end of the short story and made a note of that in the body of the email. 

With a word-count target of 300 to 5,000 words, I was glad when it came in at just under 3,250 words. A nice length and a future Wordsworth Short. I even submitted it, a day early, and then I updated my own submission tracker before updating the one at Duotrope too, as that was where I originally found this particular market.

I had a look at The Horby Bells but couldn’t really get it to fit with the theme for the other 1 November deadline, and I didn’t really want to stretch it to fit either. I couldn’t think of anything else off the top of my head that might fit, so I wrote that idea off and shelved the story until another more suitable time.

By this time it was already almost time for my 3pm dinner. Honestly, these days really are running away with me. 

I wrote and scheduled Friday’s October wrap-up post. And I set to and updated the 36-project spreadsheet for the first time in October! That’s right, Diane. Leave it until the very end of the month! But then I had to step away from the short stuff and concentrate on the next thing due in by the end of Friday. The October great novella challenge.

I had 2 choices for the great novella challenge. Well, 3 if you include start something from scratch. But when it came down to it, I figured I’d already started 1 book in August when I was given an extra week to submit and didn’t feel like finishing the one I’d started so I did another one. But when I was looking through my writing projects, I found another that I’d also already started. As this latter one was easier to carry on writing, I opted for that and ended up submitting a novella of almost 30,000 words.

China, a standalone historical saga-type thing, came in at just over 29,500 words, which was almost my total limit for the challenge. I reckon I can add at least another 15,000 words to that as well. But for now, that was enough for the October and last book of the challenge. I still wrote the same number of new words I would have done if I’d gone for the 15,000-word end.

So I wrapped that up and actually had time to leave it to cool while I went off and made the celebratory graphics. I paused for something to eat, and then we had to take the dogs to the vet’s. The pup was due his 2^nd booster and we had to register and transfer the spaniel. We’ve done practice plans for both of them, and we’ll probably add the pup to the spaniel’s insurance, if we can. 

When we got back, I finalised today’s blog post, so I could add the words to the October spreadsheet and the October wrap-up post. I sent Book 12 off to the great novella challenge. (Ta-da!) [Dusts off hands!] Scheduled this one to post today. And shared the great novella challenge graphics everywhere. I made the November graphics. And I wrote and scheduled the Hello November post.

And then I signed off for the weekend.