Tag: writing

11 August 2022

Just chillin’

The past few days have been all about chilling. I finished the editing job on Tuesday evening at about 7:30pm and it was back with the author by about 8pm, in 3 different files – one with full tracked changes; one with comments only; and one completely clean. I still have a way to go with this one, but I...

Categories writer at work

6 September 2021

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...

Categories writer at work

25 August 2021

Wednesday writing prompts

I missed another week, so here is another list of dates, this time for the second half of the month, for you to research and brainstorm for yourselves. Choose a topical date or an evergreen, and consider writing an article, a short story, or something longer. There’s time, after all. 16 August Twenty years ago next year, on 16 August...

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13 May 2021

Time to pull my socks up

Image by David To from Pixabay The time has come, the walrus said, to pull my socks up. Okay, the walrus didn’t actually say that. I did. But it’s true. It’s now time to properly stop faffing and to properly start working again. And when I say working, I mean writing. I already do enough work. Which, of course, is...

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19 February 2021

Job searches

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Thursdays are always tired days for me. I don’t know why this happens, but it always has done. Even when I ‘worked for a living’ you could usually guarantee that Thursday would be the day I turned in late. I didn’t ‘walk to work’ because by the time I realised what time it was,...

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14 January 2021

Historical accuracy in novels

Image by Michael Drummond from Pixabay When I was learning how to write, fiction and non-fiction, I was taught to always ensure that my facts were correct, as there will always be someone who knows, and there will always be someone who complains if there’s a mistake. When I was training to be a broadcast journalist, I was taught to...

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4 January 2021

Welcome, 2021

Happy New Year to everyone! Let’s hope we kick this virus in 2021, so that life can return to normal. I had a lovely long Christmas holiday, almost three whole weeks in the end. And while we were still very busy, I also did quite a lot of navel-gazing. I’ve been cogitating over the way I structure my working day....

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16 December 2020

Ducks in a row

Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay So I’ve been spending the past few days planning for the new year. I did very well this year in that I was able to complete all of my outstanding work in good time to take the whole of the Christmas period off, for a change. But that, of course, left me with a...

Categories writer at work

8 December 2020

When the work dries up …

… diversify. Looking back at 2020, a lot of us have seen major changes. I think lockdown was the biggest challenge for many. For people like me, who work from home and hardly see anyone from one day to the next, lockdown wasn’t that big a deal. I had the poet home with me while he was furloughed, and since...

Categories writer at work

25 November 2020

Planning for 2021

As 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...

Categories writer at work

16 November 2020

Ghostwriting

Here is another picture from our recent walk around Hatfield Moor. The tree is a young silver birch and it comes under 2 photography subject classifications (that I know of). First of all, it’s a ‘hero’ tree. This means that it’s a standalone tree, set apart from a group of other trees. Secondly, it’s a ‘star of the show’, which...

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10 July 2018

Fair start to the week

This is my current writing work in progress pile. The A5 book with the touchy-feely cover of pink flowers on a foliage background is the ideas book. This is where I jot down words, titles, scenarios, plots, outlines of short material, topic lists for non-fiction, market information. This book is where the magic begins … until it’s full, and then...

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29 March 2018

The end is nigh

… well, I say the end is nigh when really what I mean is the end of the writing part is nigh. For the past two weeks I’ve been in the writing cave, trying to finish the history book. Last week I managed to pop up for air and come in to say hello with the odd update or two. This...

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7 March 2018

Struggling to get motivated (list alert)

I’ll be honest. I’ve been struggling to get motivated to do my own writing. All was very well to the end of November, when I completed NaNoWriMo 2017. But December disappeared down a dark hole of running around, shopping, Christmas, hospital visiting, family stuff, phone calls, and my output dropped to zero. January and February have been spent trying to...

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22 June 2017

Having a splurge

I seem to be having a mid-week writing splurge – and long may it last. I’ve been very busy editing a heavy book, but I finished it and sent the queries back to the author. It did take longer than I thought it would, though. I’d hoped it would take around a week and it took the best part of...

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28 March 2017

Update

March has been a bit busy … apologies for going AWOL. Nothing has been wrong, all is well. I’ve just been really, really busy. The month began with the tail end of an editing job finally delivered on 7 March.  It was followed almost immediately with two new editing jobs from lovely-already-boss, and a proofreading job. The first of those...

Categories writer at work

6 March 2017

February round-up

January wasn’t a great start, and that continued into February. This is mostly because much of the time was spent editing other people’s work while the rest of the time was spent eating birthday cake. The month began with a contribution to a friend’s article on writing plus the return of a lovely job to a lovely new client. I...

Categories monthly round-up

30 January 2017

January round-up

January has not been a great start to 2017 for me, work-wise. I’ve been lazy, unmotivated and easily distracted. I think the biggest problem was I didn’t set myself a total word-count target for the month and, as a result, I’ve written hardly anything. I have had one book each in from two clients, one to edit and one to...

Categories monthly round-up