The poet made a cheesy tuna pasta bake that we saw in the latest Slimming World magazine for tea on Monday. The recipe was for six but he thought it would more likely be for four. He made the entire recipe for this first time, tweaking it a bit to suit our tastes (i.e. no artichoke hearts), and he could barely fit it all into the roasting dish we use to cook a turkey in. He split it into four and served us both with a mountain of pasta bake, so we put some of it back in the dish deciding that perhaps it was a six-portion meal after all.
It was very nice, definitely a keeper, and the other four portions went into plastic containers, Next time he’s going to split the recipe and make single meals, or two portions. Pasta dishes don’t keep very well and tend to dry out when reheated, so he prefers to make single dinners with pasta.
Yesterday we were supposed to be trying the mushroom risotto, but it’s a slow cooker meal and he hadn’t prepared anything for me to turn on. He had a long day out so we decided that we’d try reheating one of the pasta bake meals and he’d prepare the risotto last night for me to turn on this morning. This one was for four servings, but it did look a lot smaller in the picture than the pasta bake did.
The dog woke me up at ten past five in the morning to go out, the poet’s alarm woke me up again, the poet woke me up again when he went to work, then the poet woke me again when he called. I got up then… Breakfast was in the conservatory so I didn’t get around to social media and emails until I hit my desk. As soon as I logged in to Twitter, though, I was gone. I’d forgotten – again – the People’s Friend Writing Hour, but I was able to join at ten past eleven instead of when it was almost over. I must make this an item in my schedule so I don’t forget it in future.
While that was going on, in between replies and new questions, I did catch up on social media. Then I turned to my Clickup schedule and changed Substack from daily to weekly, so that I have Substack once a week, Medium once a week, and Vocal once a week. All different days so they’re spread out.
Remembering to start with my own work today, I turned to the writing list. First up was The Fool. I wrote the first line and was reminded that I needed to go and start my newsletter with a couple of snippets of news I wanted to include. But Brevo (formerly SendInBlue) wasn’t playing. It allowed me to draft some of the newsletter but it wouldn’t let me select who to send it to and it kept coming up with an error. I made a copy of the content, just in case, but by the time I’d added the two snippets of news and the short story, it was working again. It must have been a glitch.
I was pre-approved for another book via NetGalley, so moved that and it’s prequel up the ‘to read’ stack on Trello. I was approved for another sequel by another author and another publisher, so moved those two up the stack as well. And then I was approved for another one! I think this flurry of activity is because I reviewed a pile last week of books I didn’t feel able to write public reviews for, just so that the publishers and the authors had some feedback. It must have affected the algorhythms they use for choosing reviewers. I collected the books, updated my Trello card, and then made sure that they all appeared on my phone, my tablet, my PaperWhite, and my Kindle for PC so that I have something to read while we’re on holiday.
In the end I finished writing all of the newsletter but before sending it on Thursday or Friday of this week, I posted on Twitter and Facebook that a new newsletter would be out later this week and there was still time to subscribe. That unexpected job ended up taking up most of the day.
I returned to The Fool and finished the scene I started the day before. When did writing by hand become so hard? My hand ached a few times and I only wrote 591 words. I added The Fool to the wordcount spreadsheets and updated all three of them with yesterday and Monday’s totals. I thought I’d already added The Fool to the spreadsheets, but it wasn’t there. Perhaps I’m going do-lally. Anyway, I finished the scene started the day before.
By now it was well past the end of the day again and the poet was home from work. I didn’t do everything I’d planned to do, but there’s always today. Only one of the stories needs to be in today. I might skip the handwriting draft and compose it straight onto screen. That usually saves time for me these days.
Today I must write Paper Roses and get it uploaded to the 12 Stories in 12 Months website. I’d also like to get some editing done.
Sign up for my newsletter
If you would like to receive my newsletter, please follow this link or use the form below to sign up and receive your first free short story.
Join my Substack
If you would like to join my Substack newsletter and receive writing tips and articles straight to your inbox, please follow this link or use the form below.
And don’t forget, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Busy, busy day. I’m doing a lot of wrist stretches lately, and using arnica cream on my hands.
I’ve been composing directly onto Scrivener for far too long and wasn’t expecting handwriting to be so painful! The more I did the better it go, though, so fingers crossed.
Yay! I had an email notification of this comment. 🙂