Summary:

Things were a bit disrupted this week (mostly by fun caching adventures and impromptu meals out) but I had phenomenal writing days on Friday and Saturday, so feeling great!

 

Monday:

The last couple of weeks felt hard, with perhaps too much scheduled on each ‘work’ day. The experimental new schedule didn’t work for me at all – it was supposed to mean I worked four mornings a week, instead of three ‘full’ days, but it ended up feeling like I was just working all the time.

So, this week, I decided to go back to the old schedule, and also reduce the amount of paid editing allocated to each day – which was eminently possible because of the buffers I always build into client deadlines for editing work.

I started today with my GYWO discussion post for the month, then spent some time going through the queries from the client on the mythology book.

I wrote a new scene for the novella.

I also edited a chapter of the 1980s novel and started a new client project – editing an unusual ‘meta’-style novel, with an immortal narrator who’s aware he’s in a book.

Later, I went through this month’s Writing Magazine and submitted an existing story to an anthology call. I also wrote a review of an audiobook I finished.

 

Tuesday:

I started with the next Darkness scene, since I hadn’t worked on it the day before, then went back to editing the 1980s novel.

I also edited another section of the meta novel and sent it back to the author for review and approval (who later said my edits were ‘exceptional’!).

 

Thursday:

Dave and I had planned an outing this afternoon, so I focused purely on client work this morning.

I worked on the 1980s novel, the yoga novel and the meta novel, all of which went pretty well.

I was behind schedule on both Darkness and the novella, though, so I knew I’d have to catch up over the weekend.

 

Friday:

Very helpfully for a day when I was planning to catch up on my own writing, the subconscious crew presented me with several good ideas for Darkness when I woke up, so I added further notes to the outline.

Throughout the day, I alternated writing Darkness and the novella – two scenes each to get back on track with both! It all went phenomenally smoothly – 5000 words in three hours!

I also read some TL;DR flash fiction competition entries and provided feedback, and wrote a review of the book I finished the night before.

 

Saturday:

While I paid to enter the TL;DR Word Herd competition myself a few weeks ago, when the prompts came through on Monday, I was feeling under pressure on my other writing projects and uninspired by what I was given, so I wasn’t planning on submitting an entry.

But I spent some time reading and commenting on other people’s entries this morning and the subconscious crew suddenly presented me with a complete story I could write to fit my prompts. I decided it wouldn’t take long to dash off a draft, and hoped that some of the other writers would be willing to return the favour of the feedback I’d already given them.

When I checked through all the rules, though, I discovered that 40% of the judges’ marks would be on ‘creative bravery’, including transformation of the prompts and taking the plot to unexpected places. And my initial idea, while fun, was really, really obvious. So, instead of writing that, I came up with an entirely new (and much more ridiculous) idea and gave that a try instead. It wasn’t as fully formed, so it took longer to draft than I expected, but I managed to hit close to the word limit, and posted it on the TL;DR Slack for feedback.

 

Sunday:

I read and commented on another couple of TL;DR Word Herd entries and also honed my own, based on the feedback I’d received from other TL;DR writers – and then I submitted it!