Diane Wordsworth: freelance writer ● novelist ● editor ● ghostwriter ● book reviewer ● member of the CWA ● world-famous nutter-magnet
I’m in the exciting first few stages of writing and am already at almost 8,000 words after only three days. I hope I can keep the momentum and the rhythm going. I wrote 2,515 words on Day 3. 7,795/50,000 words. 16% done! In other work, I started renegotiating an existing contract. I came close to terminating the contract but the client was really nice and convinced me to have another think. So I am. Because I knew I wouldn’t be […]
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I’ve been using my own 10-project planner for over a year and it really works. But it’s also really basic as well as being really high maintenance. While I was looking for a word-count progress meter (see below and in sidebar… also below on mobile devices), I think I found a new one. On Monday, Day 1 of NaNoWriMo, I finally got around to trying it out. And it really is lovely. Seamless. Easy to use. And all I have […]
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… but then, Mondays are always a good start. I just struggle for the rest of the week after that. I should have been having a holiday yesterday and today, as the poet is using up his annual leave before he loses it at the end of the year. I had too much work to do, though. And so I worked yesterday and I’ll work today. However, I’m not going mad. Walking to work works at 9am much better than […]
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(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 […]
Read moreImage by nile from Pixabay As usual I’m working against the clock to get the first instalment of the 4th ghostwriting gig submitted in time. Deadline is today, and at the start of today I still had just over 11,000 words to write. Why have I left it so long? Well, this time I can’t blame faffing or book covers or self-publishing schedules. This time I’ve had appointments here and there as well as various interruptions. I’ve also had editing […]
Read moreImage by ElisaRiva from Pixabay I’ve been a bit preoccupied this week. Not navel-gazing or anything like that. Just trying to sort everything in my head into some sort of workable order. It’s been a bit chaotic in there of late. Mostly I’ve been working on the new book series. It was very much in the inspiration stage at the beginning of the week, but I think it’s smoothed out into something workable by now. At the start of the […]
Read moreBecause I didn’t get very much done on The Beast Within for NaNoWriMo in the end, I determined to add it to the planner for the last month of this year. So I sat down and counted how many writing days I have between now and when we break up (13 after today), and I decided to aim for around 2,000 words per session (26,000). I’m going to count Monday, even though it’s the last day of November. And I’ve […]
Read moreAs I’m up to date with client work, today I decided to start planning my own writing work for the new year. I use a 10-project planner spreadsheet. And while the above is still very much under construction, this opening page gives you the gist of what it looks like. I have yet to move the total word-count per project from the ‘writing goal’ boxes to the ‘project total’ boxes. And I have yet to come up with projected completion […]
Read moreThe River Torne is a river the poet used to fish when ‘e worra lad (when he was a young man). In those days, the lads used to wait until the river had been dredged, usually around September time, and the reeds and weeds removed from the edges. Apparently, that was the best time to fish. We went to look at the River Torne a couple of weeks ago to see if it was a viable venue for him now […]
Read moreThis picture is a magazine mock-up that my Smoggie snapper (Teesside photographer) made for me when I left Corus/Tata. The front cover image is of a blowout and I wanted to use this image on the front of a live RD&T Magazine. I was the editor and I thought it was a fantastic picture. But the powers-that-be didn’t think we should be promoting blowouts in the steel testing industry, and so I was over-ruled and the picture lay on the […]
Read moreThe murder board My murder board isn’t up yet, but every time I open this tin of bits that go with the murder board, it cheers me up no end. I think it’s all the colours. The murder board is a large whiteboard that goes on every wall in every office I ever have. Whenever we plan an office, we always choose a place for the murder board. It’s called a murder board because I write crime and mystery stories, […]
Read moreFor the past two weeks we’ve been moving house (again!), and now we’re in the village of Finningley, which used to be in Nottinghamshire but is now in South Yorkshire. It’s amazing how borders can change like that. There’s an airfield here that used to be RAF Finningley and for 35 years the airfield hosted a famous air show. During the Second World War, Finningley was briefly associated with RAF Bomber Command where the air crews finished their combat training. […]
Read moreI realised that we get the keys to the new house next Wednesday. That’s just over a week away. So I’ve decided to close the office on Tuesday. I won’t be able to concentrate properly after then anyway, so I may as well. The first thing I did was notify all of my regular clients that my last day of business will be next Tuesday and to tell them when I expect to be back up and running again, which […]
Read moreAfter basking in my Camp NaNoWriMo winner glory for a moment or two, I finished work late on Friday. It was about 9pm here, so about 11pm for my client. The work was mostly late because Word had a bit of a hissy fit and took it upon itself to remove ALL of my tracked changes. It left the comments in, but everything else was gone. And I couldn’t get them back. I did some internet research, and I eventually […]
Read moreWith me finishing the revisions of Twee Tales Too on Wednesday, I already had an extra hour today. Then when I checked in to the content-editing workroom, there was no work, so that was another extra hour today. I hoped that would be enough to finish today’s work. First of all I had the last 3,106 words to write for this month’s instalment of Catch the Rainbow. Then I had about 90 pages to finish proofreading for a client. I went […]
Read moreAs well as arriving very late to my desk this morning, I then got distracted. Three times. First of all, I saw that Martin Lewis, our money saving expert, has helped produce a textbook for schools, designed to teach kids about personal finance. The pdf for this book, and the teachers’ guide, are both free to download. Hard copies of the textbook are available to purchase from Amazon. I have downloaded this book and the teachers’ guide already. I’m not […]
Read moreOops, skipped a day … From this week, my 10-project writing planner has a new project attached. It’s a proofreading job, and I want it finished by the end of Friday. Next week, I add a different project to my planner. This week’s proofreading job means I’ll have 2 projects on the go at the same time for the first time since I started to properly use the planner. Next week’s proofreading job means the same, as this week’s should […]
Read moreYes, I know they always happen and we should always build in some sort of contingency. But I’d only just got into a good rhythm of work when this week happened. And not only this week. Wednesday happened as well. Wednesday was not a good day. I had so many chores to do that by midday I still hadn’t started my own work. And then, to top it all, a line of washing I’d taken the time to peg out fell […]
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