Thursday 12 Jan 2023: Dog shenanigans

The dog disturbed me several times during the night and that meant I didn’t get as much sleep as I’d like. The poet manages to sleep right through all of the shenanigans and often doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I’m struggling to get up. I wouldn’t be surprised if he secretly thought I was dreaming it all. Anyway, bad night = late start. Again.

Pomodoros

Don’t forget, these pomodoros are 50 minutes each rather than 25 minutes each, short breaks are 10 minutes, and long breaks are 60 minutes.

Pomodoro 1

Because I was late to my desk, the first pomodoro of the day was spent doing the usual social media catch-up as well as the daily competitions. I always start the day with a FAFF, but I do try to do most of it over breakfast. 

Pomodoro 2

I went into the second pomodoro of the day with a Dean Wesley Smith/WMG Publishing pop-up workshop. This one is about writing locked room mysteries and I watched the first 5 videos, including the new introduction, which all lasted just under 25 minutes in total. I made a lot of notes.

Then I picked up Catch the Rainbow, for which I’m currently consolidating all of the versions I have all over the place. Today’s work meant going over what I’d already retyped and comparing it to the next version I found in the file for the same time period. I kept all of the best bits, discarded the not so good bits, and ended up adding another 187 words to the total, which is better than losing them at this stage.

Pomodoro 3

The last pomodoro of the morning was when I finally managed to do some NON-FICTION book work. I started to add the latest edits and weekly exercises to the Word file for Diary of a Pussycat: a year in the life of a freelance writer.

I wrote the blog posts for this diary in 2015 and 2016 and all of the date work originally related to these two years. I revisited the collated extracts in 2019, and I went through and changed some of the date-specific material to match 2019. This time I’ve decided to leave it as it is. I could keep changing the date stuff, and then if anything happens that this book doesn’t get published this year, then I’ll have to go through and change it all again. So I decided to leave it on this pass and trust the readers to do their own sums. After all, I’ve given numerous examples of how to do that in the book.

The session started with 39,092 words in this book. It ended with 39,469 so that’s a gain of 377 words. The original target for this book was 25,000 words and then it shifted to 40,000 words. So long as it doesn’t go over 50,000 words, I think it will be fine.

Pomodoro 4

CLIENT WORK began with the editing of another chapter for the Yorkshire client. This is taking some time because the author’s first language is not English and I have to be careful to know what she is saying while also retaining her writing style. The deeper I get into the book, though, the easier it becomes.

Pomodoro 5

I had my first editing enquiry from Reedsy last Friday evening and I promised the client that I’d have a look at it this week and give her a quote. She gave me two weeks to get back to her, but I sent her a quick email on Friday to acknowledge her query and to let her know I was interested in at least looking at it. (CLIENT WORK)

Pomodoro 6

The dog didn’t get his twilight trot because he’s having a few days off. He’s been limping and when we had a look, two of his claws needed clipping, which we did, but we’re giving his pads some time to heal. I added a note to my diary to remind me to share the blog posts to social media, as my JetPack auto-share had run out. (UNNECESSARY ADMIN) Then I went straight into the final pomodoro for the day, which was once again ghostwriting. (CLIENT WORK)

Before the working day was over, I had my Reedsy offer declined. It’s the first one I’ve ever submitted, though, and I’m not really short of work, so I’m not upset at all and was glad of the experience.

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