Summary:

Lots of good progress on my latest novel, which is great. Plus, teetering on the brink of a big paid editing project – just waiting for the client to press go!

 

Monday:

It felt a bit more like I was back in the usual swing of things today – though a couple of short pieces of work came up overnight, so I had to rejig my schedule a bit to fit them in.

One was a short piece from my regular blog client. The other was item/location/achievement description text for the dark fantasy RPG computer game I worked on earlier in the year.

I also started a developmental edit of a thriller for a new client and quickly realised that he was going to need to do a lot of rewriting to sort the narrative issues out – or pay me a hell of a lot more than anticipated to do it for him… Still, I was only doing developmental comments at this stage, so that would be a discussion for a later date…

After lunch, I went back to the first draft of my latest novel, A Wizard Calls My Name. I came back from retreat all excited and motivated about it, did really well on drafting the first scene early last week, then had to push it aside to keep up with client work for the rest of the week. So, coming back to it today, I discovered I had slipped into ‘this is hard, why am I bothering’ mode – which I was rather hoping wouldn’t happen for a while yet!

Still, I went over my plan, read a bit of the previous scene and tried to get back into a more positive mindset. I had some words drafted for the second scene already, lifted from the original short story, so that helped. And I tried to remind myself how much I love this story and how much I want it to be a thing that exists in the world. And then I launched back in.

And I wrote the next scene with no problems and actually enjoyed it!

Later, I went through my marketing activity list and did some stuff to promote my book and editing services.

I also read some of The Ferryman and made notes for my five-star book search podcast episode.

 

Tuesday:

I started with copy editing a short story for my blog client, then moved on to the developmental edit of the thriller.

I went back through the Wizard scene I wrote the day before and did some editing on it.

I also read and made notes on more of The Ferryman.

 

Wednesday:

I had a 1.5 hour coaching call with Sean from Write and a Pint, during which we talked about all sorts of things, including my creative process and my current novel in particular. It was really interesting and gave me lots to think about.

I discussed some of the novel-based questions with Dave later in the day and came up with some great new ideas for developing Wizard further.

 

Thursday:

I headed into town early for my now regular Thursday freelance coworking day in Shoreditch.

I read and produced developmental feedback on a big chunk of the thriller, then copy edited a short kids’ book.

I also brainstormed answers to the questions I came up with on Wizard yesterday.

 

Friday:

I wrote a review of an audiobook and a print book.

 

Saturday:

Today, I signed up to an all-day Urban Writers Retreat online writing retreat – 9am to 4pm – goal-setting, five focused writing sessions, with breaks and check-ins scheduled between them. I don’t often do that kind of thing anymore, because I find it hard to work that intensively over the course of a day!

But I wanted to get my new novel properly started, after the initial couple of scenes got spread out more than I intended.

I worked on the next scene in the morning, and it came together more slowly than I’d hoped – but the word count and the level of detail felt appropriate at the end of the first draft, so I decided to skip the revision stage for that one.

I drafted the next scene before lunch and revised it after lunch, so overall I was very happy with my progress today, as I achieved what I set out to do.

I also had some of the focus time spare, so I read some more of The Ferryman and added to my podcast script.