September work proper finally got underway yesterday. But still I had to rejig things around so that I don’t fall too far behind. I’ve had to step away from the magazine, step away from making pdfs in Affinity, step away from working on the next magazine, etc, etc, etc, and get on with some work.
It started in earnest with proper planning for the month. This consisted of going into TickTick and making sure I’m not overloading myself with work. Ideally I want to be writing one fiction and one non-fiction book per day, meaning novellas as well as novels. Saying that, I’m quite happy to be planning one novel while I’m still in the swing of writing another.
I still have some client editing work to do, but once that’s out of the way it will be replaced with study time. I also want to be working on one stage of a short story per day too:
- Brainstorming Story #5 on Monday
- Outlining Story #4 on Tuesday
- Writing Story #3 on Wednesday
- Revising Story #2 on Thursday
- Proofreading Story #1 on Friday
Then the following week, everything moves along one, Story #6 moves into position on a Monday as Story #1 goes into production, either off on the rounds (to a limited market now) or onto my power spreadsheet. The plan is for the stories to move across my Nobo board before they leap off the end and onto my spreadsheet.
Amongst all of those stories is also my contribution for 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS, but I don’t have the luxury of 5 weeks to work on that so have to fit it in when I can.
One novel(la), one non-fiction book, and one short story. Every (work) day.
My Excel spreadsheets aren’t working very well on the Mac. They’re juddery at best, or fail to open and crash the system at worst. I had to learn how to call up the Mac equivalent of the Windows Task Manager. I had a look at Apple Numbers, but it’s way too basic for me and isn’t as attractive as my Excel spreadsheets.
What looks just as pretty as well as regimental at the same time is LibreOffice Calc. Apple Numbers looks like a 5-year-old should be using it. I downloaded LibreOffice and was able to pen all of my Excel spreadsheets in there and save them as .odf files. The only thing I haven’t worked out how to do is collecting my daily figures from 3 spreadsheets into a different spreadsheet that totals them all up.
I have one 10-project spreadsheet for my short stories, one for my non-fiction books, and one for my novels and novellas. But I’m trying to get them to add up automatically in one place so I have a single daily word-count summary. I have a 10-project spreadsheet for my client editing too, but at the moment there are still 8 empty columns on there for this half of the year. I don’t use the word-count column for this one, only the page-count column. I use both columns in the other 3 workbooks.
Every time a workbook fills up, I start a new one. Needless to say the full-length project spreadsheets can last for several years. But, it’s all working. I just need to sort out that automation, or at least find out if it’s possible.
It’s a bit muddled at the moment while I get into the swing of things, but here’s what’s on the plan for today:
- I’m brainstorming 2 short stories
- I have the gig list to share
- there’s my daily 5-minute de-clutter
- my daily blog post to write
- and I have an unexpected dental appointment
The dental appointment isn’t an emergency. It’s been brought forward 3 weeks because our dental hygienist is starting her maternity leave a bit earlier. It’s a trip out I could have done without, but with that and having to nip to the doctor’s to collect the poet’s repeat prescription yesterday, I’ve had to move work along to next week. Although my 2nd dental appointment has also been brought forward to Monday.
Otherwise, it’s an easy job list and one I should be able to do with one hand tied behind my back.
I finished work at 7pm yesterday and had to prop my eyes open with matchsticks. It’s making me tired just looking at it all.
I invested in Word for Mac when I went over, so it could keep Excel and some of the other things. I prefer Keynote to Power Point, but PowerPoint is the standard, so that’s that.
I don’t think I ever bothered to learn the Mac equivalent of Excel, since I don’t like spreadsheets.
But word for mac made it easier to work with clients who were still on word. At the time, one could just buy a license; I don’t know if it’s totally on subscription model now. It paid for itself within a month.
I’m lucky in that we already have a family subscription to Office 365, but I’m learning how to use Calc and Write in LibreOffice too, just in case. I’m still being prompted daily to update my Windows files, for Office I presume. I keep ignoring it. I’m hoping that the Mac won’t go and load them all anyway when it feels like it!
I don’t use PowerPoint, but I’m still editing for clients on Word. I use spreadsheets a lot for my own records.
I think you lost me somewhere, in the technology! 😀
I hope all is going well with the new computer.
That’s why my eyes started to glaze over! 🙂
We’re getting along just fine at the moment! 😀