Wednesday 20 September 2023: I made a magazine

I was up early again yesterday but instead of getting to my desk earlier, I was embroiled in house sale stuff that’s pretty much down to solicitor incompetence. I can’t go into detail here. Instead I bombarded my sister with a load of ranting texts, which she laughed at. She needed cheering up. She’s leading a walking holiday and there are currently storms lashing the country from left to right.

I caught up on social media and emails, I downloaded two more books that have been sent to me for review, and I quickly scanned the ClickUp forum, upvoting a couple of requests I agreed with. There were supposed to be 99 requests, but after seemingly scrolling for ever, I think perhaps it said 99+.

I made myself a cup of tea, quickly fed the garden birds, and settled down to join in with the People’s Friend writing hour on Twitter/X. While I was on there, I also ran through my Google Play books again to pick up where I left off last week removing duplicates and failed uploads, and updating covers, etc.

There was still a lot of work to do on the magazine, so that was next. I started by writing the copyright information and the coming next time panel, worked out how to resize the frames to fit the new material, and added it. Then I had to look at my page plan and work out where to place a few adverts and what books to advertise where.

I worked out the placements and created the first four adverts. Then I slotted them in and reflowed the current story around them. It took a long time to decide what to do and where to put the first few, but once I’d made the decisions, I got into a good rhythm. I was more than halfway through by dinner (lunch) time.

My dinner hour was spent catching up on some reading. I usually play a game or read a book while I’m eating, but I had some catching up to do. I didn’t get around to commenting because my dinner Pomodoro was ticking down.

After dinner, it was back to the magazine to create and place the rest of the adverts. I created a load, decided where they were all going, placed them, reflowed the pages, checked the layout, and finally printed it off for proofreading. It took me all afternoon, but I’m so glad I finished it.

Today I catch up with everything else. I also have a hair appointment, which will take out an hour or so, if he doesn’t have me sitting there waiting for him this time.

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