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 […]

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 […]

14 June 2021 Diane writer at work 2 Comments

Yes, we WORK FROM HOME!

Image by Pexels from Pixabay It occurred to me, after I posted Friday’s post, that I’d summed up the week without actually completing the week. I still had a whole day to go. And, as it turned out, I still had the weekend to go too. However, on this occasion, that didn’t make any difference to the ticks and crosses, as I already knew I wouldn’t be able to do any of the stuff I hadn’t yet finished. In future, […]

10 April 2018 Diane writer at work 2 Comments

A time-management experiment

On Sunday I pre-scheduled Monday’s blog post (round-up) and I worked on my diary for the coming week. I stuck to my original plan of having an hour for morning chores, an admin hour, three hours of writing, three hours of client work and an hour for dinner (lunch). On Tuesday and Thursday of this week, I also have an hour of yoga scheduled in, replacing 30 minutes of morning chores time and 30 minutes of the admin hour. But […]

15 August 2016 Diane writer at work 4 Comments

Challenge: Write a novel in 7 days or 10 days

Recently, I discovered the books, the website and the writing methods of Dean Wesley Smith. He’s a very prolific writer who writes some of the Star Trek novels, Spider Man novels, Men in Black, X-Men, as well as his own novels, short stories and serials. Further investigation reveals that the 7-day novel isn’t actually a full novel length, more a novella length of around 42,000 words. The 10-day novel chronicles the time he spent ghosting a novel. But hey, 42,000 […]