Diane Wordsworth: freelance writer ● novelist ● editor ● ghostwriter ● book reviewer ● member of the CWA ● world-famous nutter-magnet
Yup, looks like I’ve signed up to do NaNo again this year. If there’s one thing walking to work and back every day does, it gives you time to think things through. I’m very busy doing a lot of work. I’m currently ghostwriting not one but two novels. One is a Regency romance, the other is a contemporary story. Both need a certain amount of research doing, although I’m getting quite familiar with the Regency era. I’m also editing for […]
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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 Anrita1705 from Pixabay) After trying to fight the virus and carry on with work, I finally conceded and took a few days off to recuperate. I haven’t been as poorly as the poet has, but I have been lethargic and lacking concentration, as well as feeling a bit fluey, even though I don’t usually catch the flu. Today I noticed I had no sense of smell and last week my taste went a bit odd. But other than that… and a […]
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 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 […]
Read moreWhoo-hoo! While I was working away during the week, I didn’t notice that we’d limped over the 1,000 followers line. Wahay! Well done to everyone who shared, and a very warm welcome to all new followers! Actually, it’s currently 1,001 followers right now, as I write this. But by the time it’s published, that could have gone down to 999 again, or it could have gone up even more. Either way, it’s happened. I might take a screenshot of it […]
Read moreImage by Bessi from Pixabay Tuesday After my mammoth writing session on Monday, the plan was to take it easy on Tuesday. I’d finished working at about 3:30am and I got up at around 10am. I did a bit of faffing, checked social media, read a few articles, and did some housework. Then I moved to my desk and started the first of the day’s work. Unusually for me, I was still in my dressing gown, but once I’d done […]
Read moreImage by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay Despite still being busy, I finished work at 5pm on Friday. I already knew I’d be working at the weekend, and we needed to do the shopping before we had tea. So I called it a day. Saturday On Saturday I was up quite early (for me). The poet decided to go fishing for the day because I was working. Here’s how the day went: went through and removed my byline where I’d used […]
Read moreImage by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay I had such plans to plough through the work before the poet got home from his work trip. And then the cat got ill. She’d spent the night in the dog’s basket, which is really unusual. Then in the morning she nipped outside for a wee, came in for a quick bite to eat, and then went back to bed. In the dog’s basket again. She also had a […]
Read moreImage by Prawny from Pixabay I might not be clearing stuff off my to-do list in the order I’m supposed to, but I am keeping busy rather than faffing. Or most of the time at least. Tuesday Tuesday was a better day than Monday, despite having a bit of a rubbish night. The poet left early (about 7am) to head south for a three-day/two-night work trip. I don’t like it when he goes away, but it does mean I get […]
Read moreImage by Hier und jetzt endet leider meine Reise auf Pixabay aber from Pixabay With such a long to-do list I really ought to try and focus more. My self-discipline was not great yesterday due to my inability to ignore shiny, sparkly things. To me, shiny, sparkly things are actually neither shiny nor sparkly. They are things like book covers, or artwork, or websites, or even just a butterfly mind. I really did have a lot to do yesterday, and […]
Read moreAt the end of last week, I decided to gradually move all of my ebooks over to Amazon. However, before I could do that, I had to make sure that they were all published first. And before I do that, I want the designs to be consistent. I do love publishing my books on Draft2Digital. They make the books available on all ereaders, not just Kindle, and they have a paperback publishing tool too. Not only that, though, they also […]
Read moreThis is how my Scrivener binder for the project management series was looking when I started work on it on Tuesday. Tuesday I had a lot to do on Tuesday, so while the intention was to write at least a chapter, I only managed part of Chapter 4. In fact, I wrote 843 new words. And I updated the binder … My next job on Tuesday was to carry on planning The Beast Within. I’ve discovered from my ghostwriting that I […]
Read moreI was late again to my desk on Friday morning, but I had done a lot of work already on the mobile phone, both in bed and over breakfast. For example, I checked emails, the bank and social media, and I did another job search. At my desk, the first job I did was an hour of date work. Then I had to answer some final (I hoped!) queries for the interview I did for The War Cry magazine. For both […]
Read moreSo after yesterday’s good intentions, I didn’t get any new writing done for The Beast Within. Once I’d done a load of routine stuff, my mind was still whirling with the story ideas for the next 3 Marcie Craig books. I love visuals when I’m working, and the brighter and more colourful or striking the better. When I’m working in Scrivener, and when I’m doing NaNoWriMo, I always design and upload a cover. I already had cover designs for Snowblind and The […]
Read moreI’ve been working through the prep days for NaNoWriMo, trying to do everything in a certain order. Because I’ve decided on The Beast Within, much of the character work is already done, and the book is semi-outlined all the way through. So I’ve just been reading through all of that to refresh my memory, and adding anything else that’s popped into my head. Scrivener Something I really, really wanted to do was set up a series binder in Scrivener for all […]
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 […]
Read moreI think I’ve made a reasonable start for Camp NaNoWriMo. It was my first job of the day and I spent longer than my designated hour on it. I also already had a few words in the bank, about 2,000. But with a daily target of 1,860, I think it’s doable. I’d already typed out the first scene and started another when I tested my compile in Scrivener the day before. Yesterday, I finished the partial scene and typed up […]
Read moreThe time has come (the walrus said) to make a decision. The picture above is the short list of works in progress I’m considering working on next. One of these projects will be completed during July for Camp NaNoWriMo. But which one …? From top left and going clockwise, the projects are: Catch the Rainbow, the prequel to Night Crawler; The Fool, a pocket novel; Mardi Gras, my first attempt at steampunk; Diary of a Pussycat, the second in my writers’ guides series; Whitehorse Farm, originally […]
Read moreI’m really getting the itch to be writing again. I keep booking it in, but then I keep running out of time. I have clients that all have deadlines. And I manage to meet all of their deadlines. To the extent that the work keeps on rolling in – but I’m not complaining about that. I’m complaining about my own inability to adhere bum to seat. There are so many projects I could be working on. There’s the sequel to Night […]
Read more… because, like, I’m really, really busy. Everybody else seems perfectly able to use Canva for promotional material, but I didn’t even know where to start. And when another one ended up on my newsfeed in Facebook, I just had to have a go. I found a step-by-step idiot guide and took it from there. And here are two I made earlier … What do you think? I think I need to finish the current WIP so I can finish […]
Read moreI’ve not been completely idle since 17 October (that’s more than two whole weeks ago!). But I have been tied up with stuff I’d sooner not be tied up with. Actually, I’d rather not be tied up at all, but you get the drift. As a result of losing two whole weeks of work, along with another two weeks of plain old crap, I came back to my desk feeling a bit overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. I […]
Read moreI thought I was just tired and overdoing things a bit, but an upset stomach turned into full-blown flu symptoms. Before I started to feel poorly, I tidied up a short story, Pippa & Davey Forever, and sent it off, and I prepared another partial for Night Crawler and sent that off. I cleared the copywriting job, I sent my apologies to the writers’ group, and I asked the publisher of the Cadbury book for an extension. And then I […]
Read moreI’m running out of steam or getting distracted in the afternoons. So I’m moving more work to the mornings and more faff to the afternoons. I’m not sure if that’s working or not yet, but time will tell. Yesterday started on a positive note with a job query arriving overnight and a big publisher agreeing to consider one of my previously self-published books. I wrote my daily blog post, did a halfhearted job-search and pitched for just one editing job. […]
Read moreFirst job yesterday was the new NetGalley book over breakfast. I moved the daily Pomodoro write-up to the last session of the day as I usually start to run out of steam at around 4pm, and for the past few days I’ve been writing them up the night before anyway. I wrote my daily blog post first, which has now been moved to the very first session of every day. With me concentrating on the biography at the moment, I was […]
Read moreI had a late start yesterday. I was quite tired, the poet had left early for a business trip, and I slept in. I got to my desk at around 10:30am, but I’d done my first Pomodoro’s work on the phone the night before, so I didn’t really lose anything. First job was yesterday’s writing diary blog post. This job has moved to the top of the list and I’m giving myself 25 minutes to write it. It seems to […]
Read moreI’m starting to feel quite pleased with myself and the progress I’m making in Scrivener. having to reinstall it so many times (not Scrivener’s fault this time) is forcing me to learn to do the things I like much quicker. If I have to do one more reinstall, for whatever reason, I swear I’ll be able to tweak it to suit me in my sleep. I’m not sure I’ll be teaching any masterclasses any time soon, but I really am […]
Read moreI want to get back to blogging on a regular basis, with at least an update of what I did “yesterday” and what I intend to do “today”. I’ll still interpolate all of this with the diaries (of a novel, of a pocket novel), my fat year updates, weekly reports from the writing group, book reviews, etc, and I really, really, really ought to finish my 52 Books in 52 Weeks posts (reading and reviews) – I’m so close to […]
Read moreMy own work has become quite lax of late, with me either feeling very sorry for myself (tooth extraction) or concentrating on work for other people once again. (And I have toothache!) Last week I was busy finishing a “heavy proof” for lovely-already-client, and a new edit came in from lovely-new-regular-client. I was also approached by also-lovely-new-regular-client to see if I could fit in the next in his series of stories, and a brand new client asked if I’d like […]
Read moreOkay, at the start of this week I’d hit a brick wall and was struggling with whether or not to have a “supporter” character in my story. I’ve been playing around with this all week, shuffling between various scenarios. Could my supporter also be my opponent? Could Marcie’s mom be both cheer-girl and devil’s advocate? (Of course, the answer to this is “yes”, but would it work for Marcie? Probably not.) Could I use her dad? Should it be the […]
Read moreNow, when I say “special” I don’t mean “special” as such, I mean “other important characters not mentioned already”. According to Ron D Voigts and Writing the Killer Mystery, these “special” characters consist of the following: sidekick opponent supporter My “sidekick” was easy. That’s going to be Woody (aka Mark Palmer/Woodstock) from Night Crawler. He was easy to jot down things about because he also features in the temporarily abandoned Catch the Rainbow, so he’s had a lot of work done […]
Read moreI had a lot of fun working on my killer this week. Wednesday was the day I did this work, and I didn’t even reach the end of the chapter in Writing the Killer Mystery for creating the killer. I was itching to get creating. This story, The Beast Within, has been stewing for many years, ever since I finished Night Crawler, actually. Well, I had the title and I’ve been dipping into it ever since. (I finished Night Crawler […]
Read moreHaving abandoned – temporarily – Catch the Rainbow, yesterday I started work on The Beast Within: a Marcie Craig mystery. Marcie Craig is the main protagonist and amateur sleuth in my first novel Night Crawler. Whereas that novel was set in a pub where she works as a rock DJ, this story is set in a nightclub, where she works for 2 nights a week. The title, The Beast Within, is a song by a band some of my old […]
Read moreToday I thought it might be a good idea to get myself organised. I have so many different projects on the go, it was time to weed some out. But before doing that, I wanted to put them into their own individual piles. Here is how my current Work in Progress (WiP) is looking (sorry for the blurry pictures): I hope that gives some idea and that they’re not too messy on the device you’re viewing this on. All I […]
Read moreWith only a week to go I finally made a decision, and I’m hoping it’s the right one … bit of a gamble, but that’s how it goes. This year I’m being a NaNoReBel – again! Last year I chose to write a non-fiction book: A History of Cadbury (to be published on 30 November 2018). This year I’m going to revise the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2016: Catch the Rainbow. Above left is a picture of my NaNoWriMo reading […]
Read moreWe took last week off for the bank holiday. The last time we booked time off was a fortnight in June, when the heatwave was at its height. But we didn’t get to enjoy a single moment of it as we were moving house. So we decided to take last week off. And this time we were firm. We had a proper, bona fide week off, for a change. Because of that, I hardly did anything to The Beast Within. However, […]
Read moreIt was all going so well … With us “breaking up” for the Easter period and me submitting the history book late Thursday night, I was all set to crack on with the new cosy mystery. And I even registered with Camp NaNoWriMo … … and then we built a new office on Wednesday. It’s great. We both have loads more room, everything is in its place so we know where to find it, and we’re able to work together […]
Read moreWe’re a few days late – the book was due out on Friday, but we had some cover issues – but here it is, finally. Night Crawler, republished and repackaged as Night Crawler: a Marcie Craig mystery by Diane Wordsworth. I’m retiring the original print copies now and the paperback should be out in about 3 months. Then I’ll retire the ebooks, and the new ebooks will follow. You can only get hold of this hardback book from Lulu at […]
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