Diane Wordsworth: freelance writer ● novelist ● editor ● ghostwriter ● book reviewer ● member of the CWA ● world-famous nutter-magnet
Welcome to the new instalment in the Diary of… series. The Diary of… series is a set of three books, each one set against a year in the life of a freelance writer. Book 1 is Diary of a Scaredy Cat: a year in the life of a frightened writer. Book 2 is Diary of a Pussycat: a year in the life of a freelance writer. Book 3 is Diary of a Tiger: a year in the life of a […]
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The new blog regime doesn’t officially start until the new year. That doesn’t stop me from practising, though and, so far, I’ve done a spreadsheet planner reminding me to write certain blog posts for certain days. Here’s how the blog post part is looking at the moment: Monday: write Tuesday’s blog post (might be Confessions of a Rebel Writer) Tuesday: write Wednesday’s weekly writing prompts Wednesday: write Thursday’s book review Thursday: write Friday’s Diary of a Tiger Friday: write Monday’s Publication […]
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I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, mostly doing one of two things: Planning Ghostwriting I break up for Christmas on 16 December. Before then I had 40,000 words to write for one client and 20,000 words to write for the other. And I had just under 2 weeks. Eek! I have a Words Worth Reading to populate and publish in time for 3 January, which means I also have a novella to finish, two new short stories to write, […]
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I’m already planning ahead to the new year, mostly because I have to do some planning in order to keep on top of everything. And now is the time I’m also thinking ahead to some new series (plural) on the blog. Publishing challenge First of all, there’s the publishing challenge I wrote about on Friday. I’m going to write a series of blog posts about the way I do it and my experiences along the way. When the challenge is […]
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Day 25, I think. And I can’t say Days 19 – 25, because I only seem to have done something yesterday, which was Day 25. So I’ll just claim that one. On Wednesday I submitted the final part of Ghostwriting (1) gig Book 7, and before the day was over, the client was asking if I could start a new story yet. I told him I could start on Monday, and he sent over the next storyline and some tentative […]
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… but I still have time to catch up. It just wasn’t yesterday. I was also behind on the ghostwriting, although I did manage to write two more chapters on Monday night – one before tea and one after. I was still behind, though, so I turned yesterday on its head with the intention of doing the ghostwriting first… Don’t you just love (or hate?) that word ‘intention’? The day started a good hour later again, thanks to the dog […]
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It’s been a whole week since I updated everyone on my NaNoWriMo progress. This is mostly because I took some time off. I took two days to catch up with and clear a ghostwriting instalment, and then I took two days holiday. Day 12 Last Friday, then, which was Day 12, I wrote a blog post, duplicated a blog post on Medium, raised an invoice (hurrah!), scheduled a blog post for Monday’s publication of Mardi Gras, and I did a load […]
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I had a late start for Day 4 of NaNo. A VERY late start. And I also had a lot of work to do. However, I still wanted to do my NaNo bit for the day and while it wasn’t the first job, I did manage it in the end. I wrote 2,728 words on Day 4. 10,523/50,000 words. 21% done! Before then, though, I had gig list work to do. The poet had already updated the gig list and […]
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Prep Day Zero is actually all of the prep work for the prep work. For me, it’s reminding myself of the steps that work when I outline a project, and this week I’ve created tasks in my Asana project file. Including Day Zero, there are actually six prep days rather than five, but the last one is Day Five. What’s the difference? Well, one to five are actually writing work. Or jotting things down. Zero is just setting up reminders, […]
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From 1 November I have five new products scheduled for publication. Three of them are Wordsworth Shorts (standalone short stories, although some do seem to be falling into collections), one is the first short standalone episode in a series, The Ace of Wands, and the fifth one is my first ever novella, Mardi Gras. These are all scheduled to publish a week apart. These books and booklets are already with the publisher and waiting to go. But I’m going to […]
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(Image by mathey from Pixabay) After a relatively good start on Monday, Tuesday was harder. I wasn’t as late, but it was more of a chore. I struggled to get up, then I lingered over breakfast. But I did it. The biggest issue was that I only had my work to do yesterday and it was only by reminding myself that my work was important too that I reported to my desk. It had been a disturbed night as well (dog twice, […]
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(Image by Melk Hagelslag from Pixabay) Monday is usually such a good day that I was disappointed when work stalled yesterday. It was my own fault. I disappeared down another one of those pesky rabbit holes and when I came back, nothing had changed. I stuck with what I already had. I was looking at project management software because when I duplicated a project in Asana, it duplicated everything and I had to go in and retype everything anyway. I can make a […]
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(Image by congerdesign from Pixabay) The tags for this cover picture today included the word ‘breakfast’. I’ve been looking at the ‘breakfast’, and I think it’s a slice of bread (or toast), with sliced banana on and topped off with chocolate flakes. Dark chocolate flakes. 🤢 Who has that for breakfast? 🤔 The weekend I worked very hard on Friday to get the last part of ghostwriting (1) Book 6 in, and I actually managed it during the day, and while it was still […]
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(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 […]
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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. Next up I selected […]
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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 days on the […]
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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, the old site […]
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(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 […]
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(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 […]
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(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, […]
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(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 […]
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(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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(Scrivener screenshot) Thursday Instead of making handwriting the first job of the day on Thursday, I wrote a call-to-action blog post for Project Management for Writers: Gate 1. This was because I had to fire up the computer to (a) add a featured image to a blog post, and (b) see if the gardener was coming. There was nothing from the gardener, so I finished my first Pomodoro in my dressing gown! I never, ever work in my dressing gown. […]
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(Image by Eveline de Bruin from Pixabay) Tuesday I had a lovely long lie-in on Tuesday following my latest writing marathon. When the dog woke me up at 8am to go out, I’d already received a reply from the ghostwriting client along with payment approval and confirmation of the next instalment. I’d given myself a bit of a faff day to recover, though, and once the dog had been out, I went back to bed. He woke me up again […]
Read moreImage by Vinson Tan ( 楊 祖 武 ) from Pixabay Monday So, on Monday, I made it to my desk by 10am! (Yay!) I’d already checked social media before getting up, and I read a couple of chapters of my NetGalley book over breakfast. This meant that by the time I did him my desk, I didn’t have any faffing to do. Or not much. I didn’t start with the handwriting on Monday because I still had a lot […]
Read moreFriday Very late on Thursday night, my short story New Year’s Revolution was published in Illumination on Medium. When the postie called at about 11am, she brought me a competition prize… a purple collar with a bell on for the cat. I couldn’t help but wonder what my third piece of good luck would be before the weekend… Anyway… first thing Friday, after my daily handwriting Pomodoro, I went in and updated all of my links for the short story […]
Read moreImage by Monoar Rahman Rony from Pixabay Thursday I was still eating breakfast on Thursday morning when a text notified me that the plumber would be with us in 20 minutes to fix a faulty valve. Twenty minutes. So I quickly finished eating and got dressed and he arrived at the door at about the same time I arrived downstairs again. This cut short my first handwriting Pomodoro and I didn’t manage as many words as I have been. He […]
Read moreImage by harshal07 from Pixabay It’s another long-un, folks. Either save it for later or go get that coffee now! Tuesday At precisely 8:26 on Tuesday morning, the cat jumped on the bed and yelled at me to wake up. I must have slept well, but I was still feeling a little weary. However, I had a lot of work to do, so I had to get up. I’m trying to read more, so that I can catch up with […]
Read moreImage by dexmac from Pixabay Monday I had a very late start on Monday and for the umpteenth time I vowed to take the next day after a ghostwriting marathon and submission off. Unfortunately, I had another deadline only three days later (Wednesday), and I couldn’t take it off this time. Maybe next time… So, yesterday, the gig list opened back up after more than a year off. And so did Monkey Dust. When I finally reached my desk, this […]
Read morePhoto by Wendy Wei from Pexels Friday Despite being a bit behind on the ghostwriting, I still did my own stuff on Friday morning. I wrote a blog post for here, I posted Chapter 3 of Project Management for Writers: Gate 1, and I grabbed and prepared Chapters 4 to 8 so I had them ready for this week. I top and tail each chapter so it can just be pasted and formatted on a daily basis. I’m posting this one on weekdays only […]
Read moreSo I’m not doing brilliantly, but at least I’m doing. In other words, I’m not sat navel-gazing or twiddling my thumbs. Tuesday seems such a long time ago, I can hardly remember what I was so busy doing. Thank goodness for the diary! Tuesday The plan, of course, was to do some ghostwriting. But it was Tuesday on Twitter and that meant #TuesdayNews. I always share any of these #TuesdayNews Tweets when I see them, but I never have anything […]
Read moreWhen someone mentioned that we might see Little John’s grave on a recent day trip, we had no option but to go in search of it As I’m a bit flat out this week, here’s one I wrote earlier – for Medium. ~~~ For Father’s Day this year, Ian, my husband, wanted to go and have a drive through the beautiful Hope Valley in Derbyshire. We used to live less than half an hour away from the valley, but since we’d […]
Read moreImage by R. E. Beck from Pixabay First of all, a very warm welcome to Words Worth Writing to all of the recent new followers. Since we limped over the 1,000 followers mark, the number has been steadily increasing. I’ve been working on republishing all of my self-published books in paperback, and I’m still mulling over a competition where the prize is all of my paperback books, self-published and traditionally published. This competition is for all of you lovely followers. Monday […]
Read moreImage by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay This is a long one, so grab a coffee and make yourself comfy. Tuesday Tuesday dawned very slowly on my computer. It struggled to open everything: the internet, Word, file manager, everything. I tried restarting, but it hung, and so I turned it off and on again… and waited for almost half an hour for it to boot up and start to open things. Sometimes technology has a mind of its own. The first job I did on […]
Read moreImage by Paul Brennan from Pixabay This post just keeps on posting itself, regardless of when I schedule it to post. This time, if it happens again, I’m leaving it up here. The plan was to go out for the day somewhere. But when the weather forecast said it was going to rain all day, and heavily too, we decided to stay in and do stuff in our respective offices instead. After dinner, we did go out to have a […]
Read moreJuly is going to be very busy as I’m writing two Regency romances for the ghostwriting client at the same time. Whilst that means that I need to write at least 4,000 words per day, though, it also means that I’ll be getting a weekly wage. So it’s not all bad. The month started with me already a little behind on the 5th ghostwriting gig, but I think I have a handle on it all. I have a load of other […]
Read moreIt took the best part of a week, but with the help of the support team at Draft2Digital, I finally published the second paperback in the Twee Tales series. Twee Tales Too is now available on Amazon. I also created a mock-up in Photopea for today’s post illustration, and I saved the featured images for the next three plan/wrap-up posts. Friday Before I landed at my desk, however, I finished the current book I’m reading for NetGalley. That was one of […]
Read moreBecause it’s not as if I’m busy… When you go onto my author page at Amazon, it defaults to ‘sort by popularity’. There, at the top, are the last three short stories I published on Kindle Unlimited. They’re all free for members, and they shuffle around a lot, but the reports aren’t showing any further activity. Scroll down, and Night Crawler Kindle edition is #8 on the list – or it was at the time of writing. The paperback is at […]
Read moreI started Monday off with some study time. I’ve downloaded 6 free courses from Reedsy that each consists of 10 x 5-minute ‘lessons’. So six of them equal 30 minutes of reading time. By the time I’d done this, it was 10:30am and I was well into my ‘my work’ time. Next up, I veered off into ‘client work’ territory and had a quick look at the outline for ghostwriting gig #6. I sent my feedback back, I wrote Monday’s […]
Read more… and it’s not because of me. Once I’d done a load of household chores, I arrived at my desk at 10:05am on Friday. When I’m supposed to be there at 10am, that’s not bad going. Or not on recent standards. I had a bit of a whinge on a forum I belong to, and I completed about half a dozen feedback forms for them. Then I published Chapter 23 of Diary of a Scaredy Cat on Medium, and I scheduled […]
Read moreI’ve been sharing friend links to Facebook for the Night Crawler chapters on Medium religiously as I’ve been publishing them. But on Tuesday night, when I sent a friend link for the Little John article to the poet, it wouldn’t let him read it. He tried logging out (he created an account so that he could ‘clap’) and tried again, but it still wouldn’t let him. So then I asked him to uninstall the app from his phone and see if […]
Read moreImage by LukasBasel from Pixabay Monday evening finished on a bit of a surprise when the ghostwriting client sent an email asking two things: Could we make the new story 80,000 words instead of 60,000 words? Would I be able to write another one concurrently? The first one was a bit of a surprise because I’d already said that the outline needed a bit more substance. But if that can be remedied, then yes, I can do 80,000 words instead […]
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