Summary:

I seem to be in creative overdrive at the moment, in terms of ideas and productivity. I just wish I had the time and energy to keep up! I’m really enthused about both my paid editing and my own writing – long may it continue!

 

Monday:

I had a last-minute opportunity to meet up with a very good friend in central London, so I rearranged my week to work Tue/Wed/Fri and had most of today off.

However, the subconscious crew did poke their noses in, by continuing their current trend of overnight inspiration. Amazingly, they decided to do this on a couple of new ideas for Legacy revisions, rather than bombarding me with something new and random.

So, I very gladly added notes to my revision plan before heading out into town.

 

Tuesday:

Lack of sleep and too much creative output definitely caught up with me today and I struggled with my morning pages, getting set up for the day and actually doing anything constructive.

I did manage to edit the next section of the Vegas thriller, and I also did revision of one Legacy scene (with support from the Revision Club cheering section). So, I at least achieved the most important things on the schedule.

But then I ditched everything else on the list and knitted while watching trashy TV for the rest of the day.

Later, a blog post came through from one of my regular clients, so I edited that.

I had a really early night, hoping to be more productive the next day.

 

Wednesday:

I decided to spend the day at the cafe, in an effort to stay focused and working for longer.

And it was a good job, because a lot happened, even though I didn’t actually get all that much done!

I started out with the next section of the Vegas thriller, which got a whole lot more exciting!

Then, just before lunch, the autobiography publisher popped back up with another book for me to edit. He was happy to keep to the same fee terms and timeframe as for the last book, so I spent quite a bit of time, working out how to fit it into my upcoming schedule. It was great to get a second book from him, and I hoped this would turn into a long-term partnership.

I decided to focus on just one revision scene for Legacy again, since it was one that required a lot of additional material, and I was already somehow running out of time for the day, by the time I got around to starting it! It went really well, thought, so I was still feeling really good about the revisions to date.

 

Thursday:

I had big plans for working on non-paid, non-novel writing projects today, but the day got away from me and filled up with gym, life admin and errands. But that was okay.

 

Friday:

I took advantage of waking up early and was at my usual table in the cafe before 8:30am.

I read and commented on a novel extract from one of the TL;DR writers, then settled down to my paid editing for the day. I finished the latest section of the Vegas thriller, bringing me to the halfway point, and sent it back to the author for review and approval.

I took a break to review and revise my creative nonfiction piece, and then looked for somewhere to send it – and found a lot of possible places! So, I sent it to a few and made a note of the others, for future reference.

Later, I revised two scenes of Legacy, bringing my total to ten, across two weeks, which was well within the planned schedule.

I also started the second autobiography from my repeat publisher client, and edited the introduction and the first chapter.

By the time I’d finished that, I’d been working for over six hours and I was totally knackered, but very pleased with my staying power. I hadn’t managed to work on as many different projects as I’d hoped, but I’d got the most important things done, spent more time on paid work than I usually did, and had done something other than just that and the novel.

Much later, I caught up on reviews – two games, a movie, and two books.

 

Saturday:

I went to A Write and A Pint event, for the first time in over two years.

I hadn’t had much sleep, so I was a bit worried about not being able to enjoy it fully. But it was really fun. It was great to see Sean again and I was pleased that he recognised me and also remembered stuff about my writing. We ended up partnered for most of the day, for the writing exercises, and it was lovely to catch up.

I didn’t get any writing out of the day that I plan to use for anything (though a friend gave me an idea later that I might put to use) but it was great just to interact with other writers and relax into freewriting exercises that didn’t have any pressure of expectations attached to them.

 

Sunday:

I added some notes to my plan for an expanded short story, based on some stuff from the workshop (and subsequent discussion with friend) the day before.

I also reviewed the concert we went to the previous night.

Later, I went through my morning pages notebook and extracted the notes I’d made about the new novel idea. I put them into a new folder on my Google Drive, and added the additional notes I’d emailed to myself over the previous weekend. Still really excited about this idea!

Dave and I went for a walk after dinner and discussed a really cool upcoming submission call I’d seen earlier in the day. We came up with some fun ideas for the story, so I wrote a few notes when we got home.