Tuesday 4 June 2024: The month ahead

Yesterday was my first day back at work following a week’s holiday. We had a good rest, and a good break. But I was itching to get on with something, in particular some writing. I spent Sunday afternoon updating and reconciling the calendar, the diary and TickTick, so I was relatively ready to go Monday morning.

I’d had a problem with the website while we were away. Every single weekday morning, at approximately 9am, Jetpack told me that my website was down. Almost exactly an hour later, on each and every occasion, Jetpack then told me that my website was back up again. I checked once, and Jetpack was right, but I really couldn’t be bothered to deal with that while I was on holiday.

So I had a look first thing Monday, and I think I fixed a few things that meant my site health was better again, but there was one issue that even the step by step guidance went right over my head. My host moved my stuff the week before, and I hadn’t had any problems before. So I fired off a support ticket to them to see if it’s something they did or something I can fix.

I was going to write up a quick TRAVELS WITH PEGGY post, but I realised I’d done neither the wrap-up post for May nor the month ahead for June. I’d scheduled in ‘tomorrow’s blog post’ (i.e. today’s blog post), but I hadn’t scheduled in ‘today’s blog post’. So I did a very quick wrap-up post for the month before starting today’s (i.e. ‘tomorrow’s’… clear as mud?).

I decided to make tomorrow’s post (Wednesday’s) a quick roundup of TRAVELS WITH PEGGY. I’ll maybe go into more detail in a newsletter, as I’m way overdue for one of those and I’ve scheduled that in for Thursday.

Once I’d done the month’s planning, I had the rest of the day to work on the Halloween cosy mystery novella.

The month ahead

I moved on to planning for June, as I’d not done it in May, and I started by removing a load of date-specific short stories that had past their usefulness/topicality. I quickly did some admin for Monkey Dust, as they have a gig this Friday.

I had a look at Duotrope to see if any of the upcoming themes took my fancy. I shortlisted about 4 over the next 2 months, but when I read further, I discounted all of them for one reason or another. I haven’t submitted a single story based on Duotrope in well over a year, probably 2 years or even more. So I cancelled my subscription and removed it from my schedule.

I’m joining a cosy mystery workshop for a week next week, and I’ll have to write a brand-new short story for that. At the same time, I have this month’s 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS to brainstorm, plan, write and revise. Plus, there’s just one story I want to submit to an anthology by the end of the month. I’m starting or revising 2 bonfire night themed stories too. I decided that was enough short story work for one month.

The only longer piece of fiction I scheduled in was the cosy mystery novella. I’ll see how I get on for the first 2 weeks, and perhaps I’ll add in a second longer piece. I need to start work on 2 writers’ guides too, but with half a week in Durham and almost an entire week in Poland, I don’t know how much time I’ll have to dedicate to this. So I’ll see how I get on and review the situation mid-month.

I finished the Taliban edit before we went away but the author has responded to my queries. So I have those to incorporate before sending it back to the client. It depends on how quick the designer gets it back to me on when I start to proofread it. This book is due out in September, so we don’t have a lot of time left and I need to keep some flexibility in my schedule in case it comes back before the end of June.

I’m also half-expecting a new edit from the client, but I don’t expect to start that until at least July.

So, with all of my scheduling and planning done for now, here’s the plan for June:

• monthly schedule planning for June (as I didn’t do this in May)
• new month wordcount & progress spreadsheets for June
• accompany the poet to Durham
• attend cosy mystery anthology workshop
• write & submit short story for cosy mystery anthology workshop
• accompany the poet to Poland
• Halloween cosy mystery novella
• KILLER QUEEN
• 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS
• A GUY FOR PENNY
• FIREWORKS AT KILLIECRANKIE
• mid-month workload review
• newsletter
• client edit: Taliban book
• (week) daily blog post
• weekly tech scan
• weekly backup
• weekly diary work
• Monkey Dust admin
• Diane’s gig list admin every Thursday
• hospital appointment (dermatology)
• dental appointment
• Monkey Dust gig
• monthly schedule planning for July
• start work on annual tax return
• advance finances for July

How’s your June looking?