(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 a link here.)
However, when I went over to the old website to add the form there, wordpress.com wouldn’t let me. So I had to create links instead. I’ve had no such problem over here on wordpress.org.
I also wrote and posted yesterday’s blog post, and then I created a digest for the old website to link to all the latest posts over here. And then I went in and removed all of the follow links from the sidebar over there.
And now I’m undecided about how often I go in and update the old website. Duplicating everything on Substack already takes a little time, but I’m getting into the swing of that at least.
I submitted two stories to Medium publications yesterday. One of them, a short story, was accepted and published immediately. The other one, a revisited Wednesday writing prompts, was accepted and published today.
If anyone wonders why I bother with Medium, then this is the reason. Accepted material is published immediately, and therefore it starts to earn immediately. Yes, they take their cut, but hey, they’re welcome to it. They really are. And they pay me monthly, every month.
When I went in and removed my stories from Kindle Select, I noticed that one of them was awaiting finalisation. (No wonder it hadn’t earnt anything yet!) So I finalised it and resubmitted it along with another that I was going to re-proofread but decided not to.
The one that needed proofreading was approved within a few hours. The one that had been sitting there waiting further action bounced back this morning with a few questions from Amazon, mostly about whether or not the work was mine to publish.
First job this morning, then, was a stern reply to Amazon and a quick jumping-through of their hoops. So far, it still hasn’t been approved. I have another three stories ready to be published on Amazon, but I can see me bypassing them completely at this rate.
Today I’ve started my major planning work. Aside from the project management books that really need to be moved along now, I also have a magazine to fill and at least one new short story collection to populate. I’m going to use a couple from the archives, but the others all need writing.
I started by selecting a nice new notebook and then I sat and stared at it for ages wondering how best to manage it all. Then I started with a to-do list for the project management books and took it from there. Next up was a content list for a year’s worth of the magazine.
The first new short story collection is going to be a Christmas collection. I think I’d like it to contain twelve festive stories, but I don’t know yet if they’re going to be ‘twee’ or ‘dark’.
If dark, then I want to write new stories for Marcie Craig and Stevie Bex. If twee, then I’ll be reviving the stars of some of my old favourites. (Other people’s old favourites as well as mine.)
That turned into a right rabbit hole, and I had to force myself to stop working on it as I had client work to do. I’d been invited to pitch for an editing job, but the website was down when I went in, so I reported that.
Once the website was back up and running, I went in and responded to the invitation. I think I’m probably too expensive for them, but we’ll see. I’ve decided to go in at my top whack now when people ask me, and if it’s too much, then so be it.
And now, I really must do that proofreading…
