Summary:

Something clicked again this week and I revised the whole of my nonfiction book in one setting – with lots of paid work completed as well!

 

Monday:

With an evening theatre trip in town to keep me focused, I ventured to Picturehouse Central in the morning, with the intention of getting lots done – both paid work and my own writing.

My first task was commenting on and editing a storytelling-style mini-RPG, which was rather fun.

I then started reading and commenting on the second in the series of reflective novellas, as the author had asked me to continue after receiving my feedback on the first one.

I did manage to motivate myself to collate some more Darkness notes and also came up with a new plot point, but then I got sucked into playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, which I guess had been inevitable all along…

Mid-afternoon, a very chunky editing project (proofreading policy documents) came through, with a tight deadline, so I dragged myself away from trying to rescue Donald Duck from the Dark Portal and started that.

 

Tuesday:

I did not get a place on the mentorship programme I applied for, as the next step to get Legacy out in the world. As I have now received eight form rejections from agents, one mentorship rejection, two rejections from independent publishers and two instances of not being longlisted for two competitions, I decided I needed to try a different tactic.

First of all for today, though, I had a *lot* of paid client editing to do!

I started with a sample for a potential new client, then completed developmental comments on a book outline for another new client.

Then it was back to the reflective novella series, before carrying on with the policy documents for a bit. I finished the first one of those and sent it back to the client.

Later in the day, one of the TL;DR writers posted about an agent who had just opened for submissions, looking for YA fantasy, so I figured I might as well submit Legacy because – why not? The same TL;DR writer offered to give feedback on my submission package, so I sent it across to her.

I also did a submission to a dark fantasy magazine that had put a message out on Twitter saying they were short of stories for their January issue – they rejected mine within a couple of hours, but hey!

 

Thursday:

I had intended to go to the cafe today, but I decided being able to make my own tea and food whenever I wanted, in a more comfortable, quieter setting was more what I wanted today.

I finished commenting on the second in the series of reflective novellas and sent it back to the author for review and approval. Then I started proofreading the second (and longer) policy document. I got into a flow with it and decided I’d rather complete it today and start my other two projects fresh next week, so I finished editing the whole thing and sent it back to the client.

That took rather longer than I was planning to do paid work today, so I didn’t have time to work on any of my own projects. However, I did put together an application for a writing/goal-setting/accountability group that’s taking place throughout 2023 and submitted it.

 

Friday:

After yet another fail on the personal projects front – and the cafe focus session front – yesterday, I decided to try a different tactic. I was due to meet a friend for lunch at her place today, so I headed in that general direction first thing, found a cafe on the way, and told myself I wasn’t allowed to do any paid work (or play games or read) for the couple of hours I had spare.

I’d also told my husband the night before that I’d work on Meditations this morning, and I woke up with a pitch paragraph writing itself in my head, so that was a good sign!

While in transit, I got an email from a publisher who was in the process of producing an anthology with one of my poems in it. They have a quarterly literary magazine and were looking for lighthearted pieces for their Spring issue – so I submitted something I wrote earlier in the year – and they accepted it!

Then I read through my editorial and beta reader feedback on Meditations, opened up the current draft and went through the whole book from start to finish, restructuring, polishing, making the voice stronger, and generally improving it. I finished in just the right amount of time and was very happy with the result – time to start submitting!