16 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Faffing with covers (again!)

(artwork for book cover by Peter H from Pixabay) Yesterday’s morning faff was cover work again. I’ve wanted to rebrand my short stories for a while because I thought the old ones were a bit wishy washy. With three short stories appearing in the magazine in October, and with me wanting to release them after the magazine’s been published, yesterday I think I finally did it. These are the short, complete stories that will be appearing in the magazine. Two of them are […]

15 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

I put my rates up

(Image by Kelvin Stuttard from Pixabay) My rates for editing and proofreading have been static for a lot of years now. And when I started the ghostwriting a year ago, I went in low but towards the top of what I already knew the client paid. After all, I was learning the trade rather than an expert in it. Since then he’s given me a pay rise. With all other prices going through the roof now, the time has come for me to […]

14 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Writing rules

(Image created on Canva) Another thing I faffed at over the weekend was creating images on Canva to make wallpapers and Instagram posts. (You can follow me on Instagram too, by the way…) I’d seen these writing rules in several places and wanted to paste them everywhere to remind me of them, I think they’re so good. Apparently, they’re known as Heinlein’s writing rules: Writing rules You must write You must finish what you start You must refrain from rewriting, […]

13 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

A packed schedule

(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay) I ended up working at the weekend again. I’d like to say that once I knew the poet was going fishing, then I saved my work for then. However, it was almost the other way around. I asked him if he was fishing, and when he said yes I thought Phew! Because I already had a lot of work in. Saturday 11 September 2021 I’ve been trying to do some work every day on the magazine. Saturday’s […]

9 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Mock magazine cover + FREE gift for subscribers

(Image courtesy of Canva) I’ve been working on the contents for the new magazine, the first issue of which will hopefully be out on 1 October. I still have some work to do, such as two new short stories to write. However, as I wanted one of the stories to reflect the cover image, I had to choose that too. All of the cover images planned so far will feature somebody reading as the magazine is called Words Worth Reading. (Do […]

8 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

A bit of self-indulgence

(Image by Anrita1705 from Pixabay) I’ve pretty much set my mind on writing a bunch of short stories. For me, aside from the initial spark of an idea, this also means market study. Now, I’m actually moving away from traditional short story submissions and towards indie publishing. So the market study isn’t actually studying the market in the usual sense of seeing who’s buying what. Instead, it’s to study the actual format and see if I can come up with something useable. With […]

7 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Planning and writing

(Image by webvilla from Pixabay) I lost half a day on Monday, when it should have been my first day back, due to taking the dog to the vet. It knocked me off kilter a bit for the rest of the day, but I was still busy. I was busy setting up the subscription form for the blog posts from Substack. (In case you didn’t see that, it’s in the sidebar too – or at the bottom on mobile devices – and there’s […]

6 September 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

A lovely week off

(Image: The poet shooting High Force waterfall in Teesdale © Diane Wordsworth) Holiday! It was a bit of a mad rush in the end, but I submitted the last of my work a week ago last Friday. Okay, so it was really late. But it was gone by the time the weekend arrived. On the Saturday, after a bit of a lie-in, we did the holiday shopping and on Saturday night the poet’s band had a gig. On Sunday we […]

27 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Planning ahead

(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay) Thursday 26 August 2021 I had a lot to do on Thursday, so I was happy when I made it to my desk at a reasonable time again. I started by having a quick look at the short stories I’ve written but done nothing with for possible inclusion in the fiction magazine… It soon became clear that there was a reason I didn’t do anything with them. They were all rubbish. So that was that, then. […]

26 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Don’t want to

(Image by Jill Heyer from Pixabay) I’m a bit demob happy this week, as we break up for a week’s holiday on Friday (first holiday in more than two years!). I’ve also been feeling a bit demotivated. I think the two may be connected, and it might be why I try not to get too excited too soon too often about things. However, I suppose I haven’t had a bad couple of days. Tuesday 24 August 2021 I did it again. For two […]

24 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Mondays are always good…

(Image by athree23 from Pixabay) Monday’s are always good… but then everything usually goes downhill from there! Monday 23 August 2021 Considering I didn’t stop work all weekend and I finished very late on Saturday and late-ish on Sunday, I was up surprisingly early and at my desk by 10am. I had a lot to do, though, but only a handful of things for myself before the client work kicked in. My first job was to share yesterday’s blog post to Substack, […]

23 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

I need to be more prolific

(Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay) Friday 20 August 2021 Friday was one of those busy days where you don’t stop all day but by the end of it you don’t know what you’ve done. You have nothing to show for it. I deleted the paid-for newsletter on substack (not the free one) because by the time I’d filled it with about 50% of the material for the first issue, I was getting a warning that it was too long. Apparently, there […]

19 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Down a dark hole

(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay) (I love this artist’s work!) Not a rabbit hole this time, but it does feel as though the week has vanished down a dark hole! Anyway, look at this! I’m creating my first regular blog post on the new site and I didn’t have to make sure I selected ‘classic’ from the menu first. That’s not going to take as long getting used to as it did remembering to choose it before. Thank you […]

17 August 2021 Diane writer at work 2 Comments

Rabbit holes and newsletters

(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay) Friday afternoon/evening (13 August) On Friday afternoon, I disappeared down another rabbit hole. This one was a holiday rabbit hole after I realised that we hadn’t been on holiday since April 2019. That was almost a year before the pandemic and lockdown, and nearly 2½ years ago. We did say that the next place that we went would be Northumberland. But we also revived the alphabet adventurers on Sunday with L (or part 1 at least, […]

16 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Time out

(Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay) I love this picture above. It’s the feature picture I use on Trello for my NetGalley board. Friday 13 August 2021 On Friday I forgot to mention Slimming World. It was only another flying visit to get weighed, but I’d lost a pound, bringing the current loss to 6½lb. Just half a pound more (or less, whichever way you look at it) and I’ll have lost my first half a stone (7lb). In real life, […]

13 August 2021 Diane writer at work 2 Comments

Going fishing

(Image by Angela Huang from Pixabay) Thursday 12 August 2021 Thursday disappeared down another rabbit hole and I didn’t get a lot done, quite frankly. In fact, I don’t think I did a single thing. I was okay with it, though, because, if you remember, I’ve built in all of this wiggle room. However, I don’t really want to keep pushing things along just because I’ve got wiggle room. It defeats the object a bit. Fortunately, the poet has come to […]

12 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Writing marathons are not good

(Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay) Tuesday 10 August 2021 The day did not start as late as I thought it would, but it did start later than I would like. These last-minute writing marathons have to stop. They’re simply not sustainable. Of course, it’s my own fault. I should just do my work when it’s scheduled instead of faffing. Overnight, the ghostwriting instalment that I submitted was approved for payment and the contract arrived for Book 5 Part 4. This […]

10 August 2021 Diane writer at work 8 Comments

Writing short stories, again

(Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay) Monday 9 August 2021 I didn’t start with handwriting on Monday morning after all. I saw some news about a flash fiction writing competition that closes in November, and as I’m trying to write for competitions, and as this is only a short one, I thought I’d look into it. Then I added it to Asana and my glimmer/glow spreadsheet. And I updated the glimmer/glow spreadsheet short stories worksheet to include competition entries. I also […]

9 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Rainy weekend

(Image by Pexels from Pixabay) On Friday the rain came (again), and along with it a few thunderstorms. So some of my time was spent watching either the storm through the window or pigeons and blackbirds cavorting in the puddles. With a weekend of storms forecast, we decided to spend it at home, apart from Monkey Dust’s gig on Friday night. And I spread my Friday work out, moving some of it to the weekend after all. Friday First job […]

6 August 2021 Diane writer at work Leave a comment

Organised at last

(Asana screenshot in calendar view) This week I needed to concentrate on catching up with the ghostwriting work. Right after having one writing marathon and submitting it, I was straight into another, and that isn’t sustainable. Also, if one step was delayed in any way, it pushed the rest along too. So I took the week off blogging, Medium, my own writing and self-publishing and tried to come up with a system that will work. I did allow myself an […]

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