Summary:

Well, that was an unexpected seven-day writing week! I did a lot of very enjoyable paid editing, and made at least some progress on my own writing projects, so I’m declaring a victory!

 

Monday:

I decided it would be best to stay at home today, so I settled on the sofa (with Stanley the giant teddy bear) and attempted to get myself into a working frame of mind.

I had a new project to get started on – extensive copy editing of the opening of a Vegas-set thriller. The author had agreed to a higher rate on the whole manuscript, due to the amount of work I anticipated being involved. But, rather than jump in on the whole thing, I suggested a trial edit of the first 9000 words, so I could see how long it was actually likely to take (and decide both if I wanted to edit the whole thing and if I could potentially offer him a better rate) and he could see what I had to offer (and decide whether he was willing to pay a lot of money for me to carry on).

I went back through my correspondence with the author, to ensure I was clear on all the requirements, and launched in.

It turned out to be a lot more fun and less work than I’d anticipated, though it still involved quite heavy editing.

Then I went back to editing the autobiography for a bit.

After lunch, I offered feedback on a short story from one of the TL;DR writers, then hung out on the TL;DR Slack for a bit, trying to dredge up some motivation to work on my writing projects.

Later, I typed up some more of my outlining notes and did some more brainstorming for the short story expansion.

 

Tuesday:

I edited the next section of the Vegas thriller, the next section of the autobiography, and the next section of the environmental thriller.

Late in the day, I finally got around to starting to transfer my Legacy revision notes onto the prepared index cards for each scene. I also added some extra bits to my outlining process notes.

 

Wednesday:

I was feeling very enthused about a couple of my paid editing projects, so I completed the next section of editing for the environmental thriller, and also completed editing on the opening of the Vegas thriller, both of which I really enjoyed. I sent them both back to their authors for review and approval, hoping they would both agree to let me edit the rest of their books (which they did).

Later, I did some more work on the Legacy revision plan, transferring notes from my notebook to the index cards.

 

Thursday:

Back to the cafe, for my fourth working day in a row – not something I’d done in a very long time!

My romance client popped back up with a short story, so I edited that for her and sent it back.

I also got past halfway on the autobiography, planning to complete it by the end of next week.

Later, I did some more work on the Legacy revision plan.

 

Friday:

I caught up on my submissions.

 

Saturday:

My two prompts for the TL;DR 1000 word flash fiction competition came through, so I started brainstorming, and came up with a rather weird idea, based on an alternate meaning of one of the prompt words.

Dave and I went out on a geocaching expedition and my brain kept noodling around the idea, developing it over the course of the afternoon. When we got home, I wrote an outline I was pretty happy with.

 

Sunday:

I came up with a few more ideas for my flash piece (though I was starting to worry the story I’d come up with would be too big to fit into 1000 words) so I made some more notes.

I also finished an audiobook and wrote my review.

After trying all day to motivate myself to write the first draft of the flash piece, of course it just started writing itself in my head, right in the middle of my meditation class! Hey ho! I got an initial draft down afterwards, which I knew would need some work, but at least it was a start.