Summary:

It was another quite overwhelming week, but I feel like I eventually reached some kind of equilibrium – we’ll just have to see if it carries over into next week or if it’s just an illusion created by taking some time off at the weekend…

 

Monday:

My sleep was a bit disrupted again, so I decided to be sensible about how much I could get done today.

I prioritised the second in the series of mystery romance novellas and completed the editing in one sitting. It was really fun – and I’m hoping to get to edit the rest of the series later in the month.

 

Tuesday:

Today’s paid editing work was a reflective journal based on Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which seemed like the universe continuing to tell me I need to re-evaluate how I’m currently living my life…

I also edited the introduction of the spiritual meditation book.

Revision Club had me admitting I haven’t even opened the current draft of my fifth novel, Dividing the Darkness in a whole week… I definitely need to look at my current scheduling – because I ought to have plenty of time to work on my own projects and it just doesn’t seem to be happening for some reason.

Still, it was great to connect with other writers and get some support and encouragement. This was also very much true of the first group mentoring session I attended this evening for one of the online editing communities I joined recently.

I didn’t get around to anything else – where does the time go??? But I duly made my plans for tomorrow, in the hopes that things would somehow go better then…

 

Wednesday:

Up bright and early with a potential opening few lines of my seventh novel, A Wizard Calls My Name, in my head, courtesy of the subconscious crew! This was good because I wanted to submit the first 100 words to a competition with a deadline of tomorrow… I made it to my ‘desk’ (read: sofa) by 8:30am and crafted the opening, then left it to review later.

The mystery romance client had offered to pay me extra to resolve the inconsistencies I found in the second instalment of her series, so I went back through that to sort it out.

Next was a new paid editing project – technical proofreading for a YA fantasy novella. The author was having some problems with the formatting, so I took a look through the manuscript in the first instance to see if I could fix them.

I had a marketing call with the publishers of Stanley’s book – Meditations on Being Amazing – which was very encouraging in terms of the amount and type of activity they are planning.

Then it was on to another new paid editing project for my current most regular client – a book on astrology.

Mid-afternoon, someone I did an interview with for a copy-editing project a while back popped up and offered me a very decent fee to dev-edit her next book – before the end of the year! I wasn’t going to say no to that, so that resulted in some more rejigging of my schedule for the next few weeks… I’m committed to taking some time off before Christmas through to the first week of January, but I’m going to be busy, busy, busy up until then!

Next on the docket was the third instalment of the mystery romance series, and I got halfway through editing it before planning to move on to other things. But by that time it was past 4pm and the day seemed to have slipped away from me – again…

I went through my list of personal projects and prioritised them, knocking out a short review of the book I finished yesterday, just to be able to tick it off. I also wrote several very overdue blog posts – two for Stanley’s newsletter and one for my own website.

I also completed a submission to a competition.

 

Thursday:

We were going to play games with friends in Central London today but one of them had a migraine so we decided to reschedule. I was very sorry for her, but have to admit it was nice to suddenly have several hours free with nothing planned.

I decided to make a list of things I’d like to get done, prioritise them and then just work through them one by one in the time available, without putting pressure on myself – or doing any paid work!

I recorded some more of Stanley’s Instagram videos and tried to edit them, but the captions wouldn’t work so I had to give up for the time being. And that was pretty much all I managed because I got massively derailed setting up a Bluesky account and trying to format my profile banner properly…

 

Friday:

I was up early, but it took me longer than I expected to post Stanley’s latest blog and send out his newsletter – mostly because I got derailed setting up his Bluesky account and trying to format his profile banner properly…

Still, I started my paid work projects for the day just after 9am – finishing the last chapter of the spiritual meditation book – hurrah! This was very satisfying as the project had ended up being spread out over quite a long period.

I wrote a review of the TV show Manifest, which I’d finally completed the day before – and the ending was good – more hurrah!

Then it was back to editing the astrology book, followed by the second half of the third instalment of the mystery romance series. After lunch, I finished editing the astrology book and sent it back to the client for review and approval.

So that was three client projects completed today – hurrah again!

By this time, it was gone 3pm again and I really didn’t feel like doing any of my own stuff – again… However, I went through a few admin-type things one at a time and cleared a few emails from my inbox.

I also did a bit of brainstorming for a story exchange I stupidly signed up for earlier in the week (but it sounded like so much fun!), which has a deadline of 21st December… And it needs to be over 2000 words, which is long for me… And I have an exchange partner who is writing something specifically for me and will be expecting me to produce something good… Hey ho!

Luckily, my prompts were fun and my Story Engine cards came through, inspiring some great ideas that gave me a basic framework to build from.

 

Saturday:

I had the whole day to myself in the flat today – I wanted to have some time to relax but also get some stuff done on my non-paid-work projects. So I wrote a list the night before, had a bit of a lie-in and a leisurely breakfast, then set to doing the first task on the list.

I gave myself sincere permission not to do anything productive at all today – so, of course, my enthusiasm for doing *all the things* immediately skyrocketed. I wish that would work when I try doing it on purpose… 

First was sorting out Stanley’s Instagram videos – which eventually resulted in me paying for video-editing software so I could do it more easily and reliably. I recorded the rest of the videos for December and edited the ones to be posted today and on Monday.

Next, I completed Week 3 of the Networking for Editors course, which gave me some clear goals for diversifying my client sources in the new year.

Then it was finally back to Darkness! I planned out completing the collation of my husband Dave’s comments before Christmas, with the intention of fully building my revision plan in January. Then I actually worked through the comments on two more scenes, just to be able to say I’d done some!

I also did some more brainstorming for the short story exchange.

Then my brain basically stopped being able to process information at about 4:30pm, so I called it a day…

 

Sunday:

I wasn’t going to do much of anything today – but the subconscious crew started working their magic on the exchange story, so I wrote the opening scene, which was really fun, so I’m glad I signed up for it.