It was a struggle to get up for some reason yesterday, but I was only an hour late to my desk, so not too bad. As I opened the curtains, I noticed the birds had no food. So the first thing I did was go and feed the birds.
The next thing I did, back at my desk, was write yesterday’s blog post. I usually do this the (working) day before, but I ran out of time on Friday and forgot to do it at the weekend. I did write it, though, I chose the picture, and I published it. And then I shared it to BlueSky and to Medium.
On Medium, once I’d uploaded the latest blog post, I went down and deleted all the blog posts that were more than a month old. If I leave them on there for too long, my column of stories gets far too big. I do have bookmarked lists, to help readers find what they’re looking for. But the one for blog posts says at the top that those stories will be deleted when they’re a month old but they can still be seen over here on my website.
As they’re being removed from my profile, I’m also removing the bookmarks, otherwise the bookmark list shows ‘this story is no longer available’ for all those I’ve deleted. I chose 3 stories to read, and clapped for 2 of them. Then I updated my 12-project spreadsheet with the blog word-count, because blog words are new words and often get farmed for books if I have enough on one topic.
After my 10-minute break, I started today’s blog post, in a bid to get it scheduled by the end of the day. Then it was on to this week’s diary, which is easy as there isn’t a great deal on there. I’m trying to keep to something like 6 tasks a day, some of which take 1 hour, some of which take 2 hours. And if I have an appointment for something else, then I build the tasks in around that.
I jiggled the schedule a bit to include the publication task, reminders to share the day’s post on BlueSky and Medium, and a couple of holidays at the end of this week (we’re going to see Darts, the do-wop band, on Friday and the poet has Thursday and Friday off), and I transferred it all to the diary. By this time I was hungry again. So I paused for something to eat before getting on with the rest of my day’s work.
My pre-writing paid off and I was able to very quickly finish Act 1 of The Secret of Whitehorse Farm. In actual fact, it’s a bit long and will need editing. But I can do that too. My target length is 24,000 words, but it can’t go over 30,000 words or under 15,000 words. As at the end of yesterday, I had more than 8,000 words already. It’s probably a load of waffle, but at least I’ll have something I can polish.
I’m feeling quite chuffed with myself actually, because I was wondering if I’d have enough players. I have the first suspect, and I think I have the actual killer, who’s also another suspect until the killer is discovered and revealed, but I was still a victim short. However, as I was writing Chapter 3, a character appeared who I knew I wouldn’t mind ‘losing’, so that character became my second body drop for a future chapter.
Today I do at least the pre-writing for Act 2.
The rest of the day was spent on this week’s marketing work. A number of calls for submissions dropped into my inbox on Monday and I trawled through it all, discounting any that don’t pay at all, don’t pay enough, charge a reading fee, have a deadline before mid-December, or where I don’t match their demographic. I started to get annoyed searching through websites, looking for what they pay until in the end I decided if they don’t tell us on the first submission guidelines page, then I won’t bother.
I didn’t get around to brainstorming the December story, but I pushed it into percolation for during the evening. If I didn’t come up with anything I had to jot down, then I’ll be thinking about that today.
Oh, and because I started an hour later, I finished an hour later.
Also on today’s agenda:
- share today’s blog post on BlueSky and Medium
- The Secret of Whitehorse Farm
- outline The Ace of Swords
- monthly date work
- client proofreading amendments
- tomorrow’s blog post
- collect grand-doggy #1 for a night or two
Good work! It’s nice when there’s a steady rhythm, isn’t it?
Everything just feels so much better.