Coffee-time read

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 Tuesday was warn the ghostwriting client that Book 5 Part 1 would most likely be a day late. This was mainly due to the approved outline not coming in until halfway through the first fortnight.

If I’m late because I’ve been too lazy or too distracted or not managed my time very well, then that’s on me and I’ll work through the night to catch up. But when it isn’t, that’s less easy to do.

And so I requested, and received, a day’s extension. I do hate to be late with an instalment, but sometimes, there’s not a lot I can do about it, and at least it took the pressure off a little.

Next stop was the diary, so I could regroup and recalculate my targets for the rest of the week. By the end of the week, I should still be where I would have been at had I met Tuesday’s deadline.

Ghostwriting gig #5 should still be at Chapter 13, and ghostwriting gig #6 should still be at Chapter 3, both by the end of Friday. That’s still a lot of words, though.

I had a story accepted for publication on Medium, so I added the link to Thursday’s post (which was still sitting in drafts at the time). Already that one has had a lot of views, a few ‘claps’, and some shares.

The plan was to upload another short story to Medium, as I want to post something every day at least – or every work day at least. Only the book chapters need to be published every day.

However, when I went to check on a copyright issue for a single line of song lyric I wanted to use, I discovered that the song hadn’t even been written yet.

This story has been published in Twee Tales and it’s been broadcast on BBC Radio Devon. But this was the first time I spotted this factual inaccuracy.

I shelved the story and made a mental note to either rewrite it or remove it from Twee Tales in the future. But I didn’t have time to worry about that just yet.

I’d also planned to do this week’s Wednesday writing prompts on Tuesday, but I ran out of steam and anyway, the gas man was due to do an annual check and I wanted to crack on with the client work.

However, while I ate my dinner (at my desk!), I started to wonder if it really matters anymore. I’d already discussed it in a blog post in January, and I wasn’t exactly inundated with replies at the time.

And so I quickly rattled off a different article and submitted it to another publication on Medium. (I think I’m in love with Medium for allowing me to keep on doing this.)

Then I had to step away from the faff and get on with my work.

Here are Tuesday’s ticks:

moved Reedsy emails to ‘study’ folder (day 9 of 10)
moved Reedsy emails to ‘study’ folder (day 10 of 10) (for some reason these came in on the same day)
negotiated an extra day for ghostwriting gig #5 part 1
updated the diary for the rest of the week
shared the link for the story I had accepted on Medium on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
added the new story on Medium to the master index
wrote and submitted Is it okay to bend the facts to suit a story? (489 words)
wrote and scheduled this week’s Wednesday writing prompts (877 words)
added an earlier Wednesday writing prompts to Medium
wrote chapters 4 and 5 of ghostwriting gig #5 (4,503 words)
started today’s blog post (697 words)

Words written today = 6,566

Wednesday

Despite only writing two chapters the day before, I still had a late night. I didn’t get to bed until 1am.

The dog woke me up a few hours later to go out, and then a builder arrived who wasn’t supposed to be here until today. After the builder, I went back to bed, and ended up sleeping in.

The builder had taken down a fence so he could leave some new doors in the garden. (He’s fitting those today.) When I got up again, I had to check he’d put the fence back (to keep the dog in). He had.

As I was in the garden, I did some other garden stuff (dog poo patrol, feed and water the birds), and when I came back in I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. (Procrastination much?)

I hit my desk at 11am, so I was only an hour late. I had a bit of a pootle around on social media and Medium, then opened up all of my work files and started work.

My work files consist of: Scrivener, which contains the book; Toggl, which tracks my time; Asana, which reminds me which part of the project to do next; and occasionally the internet.

Usually, I switch the internet off, so that I can focus. But sometimes I like to quickly nip on to check a fact, such as when the first Cox’s Orange Pippin apple was cultivated.

When I’m working solidly on the ghostwriting, I try to have a little break in between chapters. When I come back to it, I generally read through the last chapter I wrote before starting the next one.

Doing this, I can pick up errors I didn’t pick up when I wrote it or proofread it. Also, it reminds me where I am so that I can, hopefully, continue without too much cogitation.

The first thing I did, then, was read through the last chapter I’d written, which was Chapter 5. Then I grabbed a drink and carried on with Chapter 6.

And then I got distracted when I realised it was World Chocolate Day and I hadn’t done one of my Cadbury flyers. I quickly remedied that, shared it everywhere, and then came back to the book.

The ghostwritten words were a wrench and I broke off a couple of times to see some goals on telly. But here’s what happened on Wednesday:

marketing for the Cadbury books on World Chocolate Day
tracked some thunderstorms on veryweather (we had a couple of thunderclaps)
kept on checking to see if my story was accepted on Medium (it wasn’t) (or not by the time I finished blogging about the day)
wrote chapters 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of ghostwriting gig #5 (9,166 words)
completed today’s blog post (501 words)

Words written today = 9,667

Thursday & Friday

Thursday and Friday will be in Monday’s blog. Otherwise, this one would have been twice as long.

Have a great weekend!