Chapter 31: Tuesday 6 September – or ‘there should be a book review here but I don’t have one ready…’
Wow, it’s been almost an entire month since my last diary post (9 August). That really is terrible. My excuse: I was incredibly busy at the start of August and then took a bit of chill time while I took stock. Then I was raving busy again. And then we went on holiday.
We had the last 2 weeks off. The first week was because we were on holiday. The second week was because we were supposed to be moving house. However, as we didn’t get the keys until Saturday 27 August (when we were supposed to be getting them on Wednesday 10 August), we weren’t ready to move. As it was, we had to come home from our holiday a day early just to sign and pay for everything.
And then, when we finally did get the keys, there was a load of rubbish left behind in both the shed and the garage and the garden at the new house was badly overgrown and unkempt. Therefore, the week we should have been moving in we were actually clearing as much rubbish as we could, transferring rubbish from the shed to the garage, and chasing the agent to get the garage cleared out.
We need a secure garage and we need a secure shed, and until we have both, we have nowhere to move our stuff. The garage was finally cleared out on Thursday afternoon.
I managed to still publish 3 books over the past 3 weeks, so I’m still on track to meet my publishing challenge by the end of October. The date is looming now and I’m starting to wonder what I’ll do instead of all that publishing admin and management…
Book review Tuesday
There would usually be a book review appearing on a Tuesday on the blog, but as I don’t have one ready, and am, in fact, still reading the next book for review, I thought I’d throw in an extra Diary of a Tiger instead.
I did think the diary would move to daily at the start of August, but that didn’t pan out either, so now I’m back to at least weekly, but more often if I don’t have anything prepared, rather than not post anything.
Back to work
My first day back at work, for now*, was yesterday, and I got a lot more done than I thought I would:
- I created a Twitter flyer and an Instagram flyer for the book I published yesterday
- I wrote a new publication day blog post
- I created a new publication day Instagram post
- I created a Monkey Dust event for the poet’s band
- I created a Monkey Dust poster for this Friday’s gig
- I publicised both the event and the poster on Facebook
- I prepared a writing sample for a potential new client (more on that below) and sent it off to them
- I did new-month admin
- I created a new multi-project progress spreadsheet for September
- I wrote up the week’s tasks, jobs, goals and deadlines in a new planner book (more on that below too)
- I printed off the next editing job for my client
- I changed the toner on the printer
- I created a weekly blog schedule
- I caught up on daily competitions (BIG job, not done since the end of July)
- I kickstarted my Dean Wesley Smith online pop-up workshops, watching 3 videos
- I created a new backup directory on my portable hard drive – then waited for hours while just one folder backed up to it (I think there might be an issue with the memory stick, which is why I’m moving everything off the memory stick and onto the laptop, backing it up to the portable hard drive)
- I devised a daily backup plan and a weekly PC maintenance schedule (something I’ve not done for a good few years)
- I did some ghostwriting
* I say ‘for now’ because we *will* be taking another week off when we get around to moving everything over to the new house.
Phew! And that’s all in only one day! Mondays have historically been good, productive days, though. It’s usually all downhill from here, folks!
Potential new client
I was approached by a potential new client whose budget was less than what I’d usually consider. However, instead of simply declining the job this time, I decided to let them know exactly how far off the mark their budget is.
So I took a punt and replied with a quote, requesting a 25% deposit, for several hundred dollars more than they were willing to pay for the whole project, and telling them I couldn’t start until October, thinking they’d simply thank me for my reply and regrettably choose someone else…
…well, I’d wager, dear reader, that you already know what’s coming next…
They said great, they could work with the revised fee, October was fine, and they asked me to send them a sample…
Gee, I wish I’d gone in so much higher now! Now if they decide to go with someone else after all at least I’ll know it’s my writing they don’t like.
My new planner
I do use ClickUp for planning and project management, and I do enjoy it. I was, however, missing my diary. I have to be online in order to see ClickUp, so if the internet/phone signal is down for whatever reason, I can’t access it (several of us have asked for it to be available offline, but we wait with bated breath), I still like to see, at a glance, what I have on.
Much of it is repeat work, but even so…
I don’t really need an entire diary for this extra work, so I’ve been looking at various paper or book planners for well over a year. At the weekend, when we were shopping, I finally found one – in the supermarket – that might work. So I’m trying it out for a few weeks and if I like it, I’ll get another one for when this one runs out. If I don’t like it, I’ll carry on looking.
Tomorrow…
Tomorrow’s blog post would usually be writing prompts. But as I’ve not got any of those prepared either, I guess I’ll be writing another instalment for the diary.
By the time I’d finished writing this yesterday, that folder I was backing up was still at only 37%, and the potential new client had sent me another favourable message.
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Your productivity never ceases to amaze me. How frustrating with the move, although what I’ve seen of the garden photos, it looks like the garden is delightful.
I’m trying to get my big desk blotter calendar for next year, but right now, everythign is still June to June, and want January to December, so urgh. I’m printing out the hard calendar sheets from General Blue to keep on top of my content calendar.
We finally have a date off the insurance company, which has helped with other arrangements, and we are going over there daily collecting fruit from the garden or dead-heading the roses, etc.
I’m starting to think the best planner for me will be one I design myself. We’ve already started on a novel planning workbook – I tell Ian what I want and he applies it in one of the Adobe products. But it’s time consuming.