New Year's Guidelines

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

I'm setting guidelines rather than solid resolutions this year, because I think I stand a better chance of success that way... although some of the guidelines will have to be as solid as resolutions, or my editor will kill me! LOL

Writing Related Guidelines

• Write 1500 words per day, every day, if I can
• Not get cross about things I can't change to do with publishing/self publishing/the book world
• Remain positive about my strengths
• Try and work around my weaknesses
• Meet my deadlines
• When deadlines are met, take time out for a REST!
• Not check my self published sales figures any more than once per day
• Ignore 'dramas' as much as I can
• When first guideline met, do something about my mailing list and my web site
• Blog more

General Guidelines

• Not dwell too much on my age
• Relish the small pleasures of everyday life
• Adopt new cats [think that one's already in process]
• Try and be a smidge more active
• Try and eat a smidge more healthy
• Not dwell too much on health phobias and fears
• Try and be more organised generally
• Finally make serious effort with Dumpster Office of Doom
• Watch less junk telly and more 'fill the well' telly
• READ more!

I may add to these later. Wish me luck, eh? :)

Best laid plans and all that...

Well, so much for my post about goals. So far, this week, I'm failing magnificently at achieving anything! Have half written one blog post, but for the rest of it, am not getting very far...

Sadly it doesn't look as if I'll be publishing IN SEBASTIAN'S HANDS this week, due to a technical hitch. Basically, I forgot, when I got my all new all singing all dancing Win7 64 bit laptopamabob, that some older programs might not work on it. Most things are fine, but dear old Mobipocket Creator just won't play. It worked well on my old system, but because it's a fairly elderly program, it's just not compatible with 64 bit technology. So I've been faffing for hours on end, wrangling various workarounds using online converters and whatnot, but not finding anything completely satisfactory. However...

Just yesterday, I downloaded a program called Jutoh, which I think shows a good deal of promise. I'm still in the early stages with it and cocking things up a lot, but I can see that once I've learned it, it could be a much better way of creating Kindle ebooks and epubs, and lead to me producing a slicker, more aesthetically pleasing job. I'm pretty proud of the books I did with Mobipocket and various online converters, but I think I can do even better with Jutoh. But, I need to put in the hours learning how to get the best from it.

Hence the delay with SEBASTIAN.

So, looks like I need to get my finger out and get on with my goal tasks. The freebie I mentioned will probably be next week now too, but hopefully worth the wait, for those who didn't pick it up before...

A blog post about blogging

As people visiting my blog will know... I'm the world's worst blogger. I used to post quite frequently, and muse on various topics with a semblance of mild intelligence, but nowadays the ideas don't come as easily. I think it must be my advancing age and querulousness. My creativity mostly goes into my fiction writing now, and only springs to life when I switch on my 'dark side' ie. the part of my brain that allows me to tell stories and have mad ideas for characters and bits of plot.

Outside of the dark side, my brain is a very sparsely populated region indeed, an echoing void consisting mainly of health worries, publishing worries, self publishing worries, and questions of what to have for dinner. It's a drifting soup of half formed notions, with odd thoughts about Poirot, Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes floating around in it too, because I watch and read so much stuff about these three fabulous sleuths that they've become more or less permanent residents in the wasteland inside my head, a place where seagulls flap and soar in the near emptiness.

I only blog this particular snippet because I find myself in the position of having not one, not two, but three guest blog posts to write in the next week or so, and I'm desperately trying to coax my 'little grey cells', as Poirot would call them, into some semblance of blogging activity, as opposed to a state of running around the room, and waving their arms about in panic.

It's going to be a reach though... So if anybody has any general tips or ideas for me, do please put them in comments, and I'd be eternally and wholeheartedly grateful. :)

Dumpster Office of Doom

[It's far, far worse than this now!]

People who know me know that my office is an uninhabitable, unimaginable pit full of clutter, crap and the detritus of a thirty plus year career of total irrational hoarding. It's bad. And it just seems to get worse... and not always down to me. Certain home improvements have impacted unfavourably on my office and created an even greater disaster zone of books and paper and 'stuff' recently.

And today, this is getting me down more than ever, because himself is sorting *his* office out and has lots of space, can move, and can find what he wants. Which makes me very envious, even though I know my predicament is mostly [well, completely] of my own making. Sigh...

Something needs to be done, but I think I can't really tackle it until I get the first draft of IN THE FLESH done, something I intend to complete by the end of April, with luck. But when that time comes, I'm going to take action. I'm going to have to be stern with myself over things like magazines, and set a date before which everything will be thrown away, with no exceptions. I've always found it hard to let go of such things as books, magazines and VHS tapes, my thinking being that one day, I might need something I've read or watched as research or background for my books. Not being a person who's travelled much or done much in the way of exciting jobs, I depend on research materials a lot, to supplement a vivid imagination and a sort of 'empathy' for other lives and times and situations... But I started all this hoarding long before I had access to the internet, and now, my first port of call for research/background is the web, where I can usually find much, much more information, and probably better, than I might have gleaned from an old magazine article or a book I read years ago....

So, come the merry month of May, I'll be starting the long, long project to restore my office to the state of... well... and office. And that, I suppose, is my greatest, belated, New Year's Resolution. Wish me luck...

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Eating: chocolate finger biscuits
Watching: snooker
Reading: Daily Life in a Victorian House - Laura Wilson [excellent children's book]
Writing: nothing yet
Feeling: completely fed up and frustrated by Dumpster Office of Doom

I should never get off the Merry-Go-Round!

I've come to the conclusion that I should never completely get off the merry-go-round of writing, no matter how ill or tired or uninspired I feel.

If I ever stop writing for a day, it's twice as hard to start again the next day, and three times as hard if I leave it a couple of days... and so on, and so on. And so the feeling grows and perpetuates until writing becomes some horrible, hated monster I just can't face.

I've been falling off the merry-go-round quite a bit in this last month or two. Health problems, other worries, life crap and other disappointments have all put me again and again in a 'I'll take a break today' mood and those 'day' breaks have turned into longer and longer intervals between writing. And this just won't do!!!!

These gaps make me easily forget that I *can* actually write, and even if I'm not one of these golden, talented writers who everybody adores, I am quite good at some aspects of the craft, and quite a few people *do* love what I do! :)

I also forget how much I *enjoy* writing, if I don't do it. I somehow manage to block all memory of the pleasure I experience from writing, and only remember the hard aspects of it, like coming up with plots and ideas... I focus on my shortcomings instead of relishing and celebrating my strengths.

So, from today onwards, I will be engaged in attempt no. #23,742 to write a little bit of something every single day, even if I don't feel like it and haven't the foggiest idea what project to work on! Call this me getting an early start on my New Year's Resolutions!

Sorting out Sunday again....

and it needs it!

As you'll have seen from my tweet, I've been searching and sorting amongst the morass of disorganised paper and assorted crap that constitutes my filing system. There was an important document I wanted to consult, and when I went to the filing cabinet that I barely use at all, and looked in the relevant section... needless to say said document wasn't there, because I took it out a couple of months ago, when I thought I had need of it then. And yeah, I didn't file it away again... that would have been far too easy!

But the good news is that I've found it, and marked it and sort of filed it so I won't lose it again. But I really need to slowly, perhaps, bring order to the chaos. I can't go on having to have these frantic, angst-ridden and emotionally draining searches for things. I haven't the time. But, I need to invest time in getting things sorted first, even if only gradually.

Actually, I need a secretary, or a PA, or even a wife to sort my life out for me. But wait... I'm a wife myself. Mmmm.... something wrong there. LOL

I'm grumpy again...

... but what's new there?

I know I should be nicer, and more philosophical and all that, but I'm not. I'm in one of those moods or phases when everything seems to annoy me, and make me grind my teeth and scowl, and feel more collosally curmudgeonly than I already am. I'm the sort of person I hate, actually. Always seeing the glass half empty and being jealous and resentful and downbeat.

I don't know whether it's my age, or just my horrible personality. Probably a bit of both. I've always been like this, but now, as the years pass, I just get more and more like an evil old witch, muttering in my cave and harumphing all the time.

I really must cheer up and adopt a positive attitude before RWA or nobody will speak to me!

State of Rage

Crikey, I wasn't half in a mood yesterday! And I don't know where it came from, really. Naturally I've got the usual worries and minor crap going on in my life, but who hasn't? But I don't think any of it is enough to explain the state of psychotic rage that descended on me late yesterday morning and seemed to grip me until early evening.

It's funny, I was fine in the morning, and even managed to accomplish a task that usually turns me into a snarling beast - parcelling up books to send out - in a calm and reasonably contented manner. Then everything changed and I seemed to turn into Jack Torrance or Victor Meldrew on benzedrine or summink. Just total rage. With everything. I'd say it was like PMT, but I should be past all that crap... Maybe it's like some unexpected sunset upwelling of the hormones before I settle down to being a mildly grumpy old woman on a fairly even keel? Who knows... But it's a miracle I didn't break a lot of stuff yesterday, and some of it expensive. Thankfully, I confined my destructive tantrums to a bit of paper crumpling and mild throwing about...

Needless to say, me being me, I selected the most stupid job to do yesterday afternoon, given the above mentioned foul mood. Catching up with my accounts! Sigh... Thankfully last years are all sorted and submitted to the mendacious gouging bastards who like the bleed the average working woman in the street dry aka. the Inland Revenue. But this year's are in a bit of a muddle and need bringing up to date. Just the job to get stuck into when you're feeling like a cross between an axe murderer and a chain saw killer... But then I never did have much good sense...

The good news is that I feel quite chipper today... not ecstatic, but not enraged either... Let's hope this mildish mood survives the rest of the day, eh? :)

I'd forgotten how much...

... I hate checking page proofs!!!!!

It's not that I hate the book itself, on the contrary, I'm very fond of it, and the characters. But I hate having to read it twice on the trot, knowing I'm going to find snafus. I daren't just read it the once, because I always, but always, find new errors on the second pass.

Worse than the actual reading and marking up the errors is the decision making. Making decisions is one of the things I loathe and hate and dread in life with extreme prejudice! And having to decided, with certain page proof 'funnies' whether to change them, or how to change them, makes me want to scream and cry and break things. It's horrifically stressful. In fact I actually get a physically sick feeling in my stomach at the thought of it... I've got that right now, and I'm doing anything I can to avoid tackling the proofs again... including making lolcats instead of getting stuck in.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I should be a pro about this and get started and not whinge like a baby about it... but as my dear old Mum would have said, I'm 'maungy' and a drama queen, and can really act like a kid about things sometimes...

Time for a coffee, methinks, and maybe I'll watch a bit of snooker now... and start again on the proofs this afternoon. LOL

Erm....

... according to my stats nobody followed this link the other day.

hot sexy fiddling about in a mop cupboard....

It's naughty fun, I promise you! :)

Stop Press!

I am so dumb... when I changed the format of my excerpts blog... I forgot to add the stat counter, didn't I? No wonder there seem to be no hits!!!!

I am such a doofus sometimes, aren't I? LOL

I've been feeling...

... a little bit foggy these last few days.

I think it's a viral thing, because I'm a bit sinussy too, and with a tendency towards headaches etc, as well as a cough. I think I feel a tad sharper this morning, but I'm not crystal clear. Not that I ever am...

I haven't really done much of anything since I turned IN TOO DEEP in on Monday. A lot of time has been spent grappling with stupid technology. Basically trying to get my old Psion 5MX to talk to my laptop... when my laptop doesn't have a serial port and the Psion only connected via a serial port. After trying two previous USB/serial adaptors, I was ready to chuck in the towel, then I read a blog post somewhere, recommending yet another brand... and lo and behold, it arrived this morning and it actually works. Hurrah! My idea is to take the Psion with me to RWA, so that if I have any brilliant ideas, I can type them up on it, and then load them onto the laptop when I get home. :)

Needless to say, wrangling with recalcitrant comms software and drivers isn't the best thing to do when you're fuzzy headed, but me being me ie. a complete twit, I've wrangled, and probably made myself feel worse into the bargain.

I'm foofing about again....

I'm foofing around again. Wasting time. Fretting over issues and annoyances instead of thinking positive and getting on with IN TOO DEEP and finishing Professor Hottie's story. I'm so close to the end, within 5K of it... and yet somehow, I can't bring myself to round things off. It's because I'm brooding over stuff, sinking into powerlessness again... and it's very tough to shake this off when it gets a hold on me.

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Telly: nothing
Choc/Yummy: carrot cake
Mood: powerless
Writing: none
Reading: Sanctuary - Eden Bradley
RSI/FMS: so so


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Parcel rage and greedy piggery...

Ack, I hate wrapping parcels, packing things up in padabags, labelling etc etc... It's an activity that induces a state of extreme rage in me. It's the securing that gets me, and the fact that modern sticky tape seems to be designed to only stick to things that it's *not* supposed to stick to! Try getting it to adhere to the surface of a padded bag, and you have to put *another* layer of sticky tape on to stick the first layer to the ****ing bag!!!! By the time I finished the three parcels I had to prepare this morning I was in a blind, towering fury, I'd nearly smashed up the contents of all three parcels and my throat was sore from screaming in frustration... at the b*ggering sticky tape!

Needless to say, none of the above is conducive to settling down and writing beautiful prose. Or even writing fairly horrible prose. Instead of getting on with what I was supposed to be getting on with, I settled in for an extended coffee break, half an episode of Numb3rs [with less Charlie than I needed] and more chocolate than I intended to eat. I had a nice piece of a Hotel Chocolate mini slab that I was going to eat half of... and guess what... I ate the whole piece without realising it. And now I feel like a fat, bloaty whale... bleck...

And even now, I'm not in the mood to write. I have a medical appointment this afternoon, and I won't be 'settled' until that's done with. It's only routine, nothing to really get het up about, but still I'm uneasy. And by the time I get back from that, it'll be nearly tea time and we've got fresh brussels sprouts for tonight, and they'll need peeling.

The one good thing in this is that it was persisting it down with rain up until a short while ago... and now it appears to be fine. Although there are some dark clouds on the horizon. And much as I hate and loathe them, I don't want those m***********g parcels to get wet when I go out with them!!!!

Updated to say:

It's absolutely peeing it down outside now! Will be drenched 30 seconds after stepping out of the door! My day just gets better and better...

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Telly: Numb3rs
Choc/Yummy: Hotel Chocolat
Mood: parcel psychosis
Writing: not a bleedin' thing
Reading: A Kingdom of Dreams - Judith McNaught
RSI/FMS: so so


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

temper tantrums

I'm having one of those sorts of days again. Just feel swamped and aggravated and in that mood when if anything doesn't go exactly as I want it to, I'm likely to crush, mash, smash or grind it into bits.

I've been trying to get a few things organised, but the process of trying to get things into some kind of order just seems to create more disorder. I think I'm in some sort of twilight, inverse zone where the opposite of what I intend happens. Grrrr....

The only actual achievement today is finishing the second round of proof checking on ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT, and sending off the corrections to the editor. These proofs weren't too difficult a task, just one or two scrappy bits here and there, but now I've finished them, I've to start out on another set, for THE RETREAT. A cursory glance at the latter doesn't reveal anything too serious though, and it's only a fairly short novella.

When this is done though... I *must* get back to IN TOO DEEP!!!!! Again, I seem to have lost contact with it, but not too badly I hope. I keep seeing the next bit of it in my head, just a particular image that has really touched me somehow. I think it's in my mind because I'm watching a lot of Numb3rs at the moment, and Professor Hottie is quite clear in my mind.

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Telly: Numb3rs
Choc/Yummy: lots
Mood: deranged
Writing: proof checking
Reading: nothing really
RSI/FMS: really bad fibro type aching plus cough


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

I hate myself...

I have so much to do... and I wasted almost all of yesterday procrastinating and foofing around on the web. I'm just unbelievable! I could credit it if I was young and irresponsible, but I'm an old bird and I should be more in control of myself!!!!

The only thing of worth I did yesterday was a bit of my web work, but I did nothing towards either the Ill Met proofs or In Too Deep. It's bloody ridiculous that I can behave this way, but I do it again and again. It's no bloody wonder I don't achieve the dreams I have as a writer... and I deserve to fail. Because I am wilfully stupid!

So much for my informal NY Resolutions... I've smashed all of them and it's only the 6th of January!

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Telly: going to watch Numb3rs on my exercise bike in a minute
Choc/Yummy: not yet but soon
Mood: disgusted with self
Writing: not yet, but proofs soon
Reading: Radio Times
RSI/FMS: rather tired and under energied


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Ups and Downs...

Yesterday, I was astonishing!!! I wrote 4K words on The Retreat. Yes, a whole 4000 words in one day... isn't that amazing. I felt like a real, productive writer, the sort I read about in blogs who are prolific as nobody's business and are surging forward and securing faboo contracts all over the place!

Today, I'm less astonishing... in fact, I'm crap. Have done nothing so far, and have got hooked into watching a movie I know I shouldn't have, because I won't be able to stop now...

It's about this guy...

Jason Bourne - one man mayhem factory. Mmmmm..... me like.



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Telly: The Bourne Ultimatum
Choc/Yummy: thorntons alpini bar
Mood: disatisfied with self
Writing: **** all
Reading: Lord of Scoundrels
RSI/FMS: achy


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Ack, it's one of those Mondays!

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Telly: classic Mission Impossible
Choc/Yummy: Tesco Belgian Milk
Mood: low, exasperated, powerless
Writing: nowt
Reading: nowt
RSI/FMS: weary, unable to focus mentally


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Eeeek!

Argh, it's only day three and I'm feeling a panic attack! After two days of positive attitude and achievement, I'm now beset by one of those mornings when everything in favour's against me, and I can feel the entire day slipping away into a state of getting nothing done!

I must not succumb to this though! I must stay calm, focus on my writing ideas, and get myself into the zone. I must give myself permission to write a little less, maybe? But I should maintain a general optimistic attitude and lead by example as a Sweat70 sponsor...

I shall have to shape up soon or Mr Blue will be on my *ss! [I wish... ;) ]

And speaking of hard-core Sweat70 motivators, nip over to Kim's Blog and meet The Colonel!

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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

I *will* do better! Yeah, right...

With the start of a new working week, I'm determined to do better!

Basically, I'm sick to death of myself for frittering away hours and hours of valuable time, either foofing about on the internet, or just sitting like a zombie being negative. It just won't do! And I can't go on doing it, because I have a whole page full of 'to do' list and some of it's just got to be cleared or else I'll sink under the weight of it and never ever catch up. I should be getting stuff done and clearing off jobs, just in case something exciting happens... And no, there's no specific exciting thing on the horizon, but you never know... something might come up, that needs my attention, and then I'll be wishing that I'd used all my wasted time more productively.

Anyway, in spite of being very tempted by my usual foofage, I've managed to get 1K words of Chance of a Lifetime done, and it's only midday. Which means that I've done my quota nicely and can either push on and do a bit more this afternoon, or switch to other jobs that need doing! It does not mean I can go surfing around the Lolcats sites and/or Encyclopaedia Dramatica!

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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

I'm fighting with myself...

... over Gothic Heat.

Basically, it's like this. I know I should give it one last read through, to check for inconsistencies... but I just can't bear to go through the flipping thing yet another time. I like it and all that, after all my trials and tribulations with it, but the thought of ploughing through it yet another time gives me a sick feeling of dread in my chest. A feeling that almost rivals the sick feeling I get that there might be some glaring and stupid continuity boo-boo that I've perpetrated in my latest edits, and which I'm blind as a bat to because I'm far too close to the story and the characters.

I've been through this a gazillion times, with other books, and I've always regretted not doing that one last read through because there have been instances when I've received the page proofs and an inconsistency of the type I fear has been there, sitting in the pages of my almost ready to be published book, festering and pulsating with horribleness and unprofessionalism like a giant infected boil. And at that stage, it's hellish difficult to change things with the minimum of disruption to the 'shape' of the printed pages! Copy editors are supposed to spot things like this, but I suppose they're only human and have blind areas too.

So, I'm putting off and putting off this horrible task... and it wouldn't be so bad if I were doing something productive instead of it, but I'm not. I'm just foofing about and allowing my To Do List to grow to humongous proportions... It's already spread from one page to two and jobs keep piling up!

I'm just a pathetic mess, really, aren't I?


--
Telly: History programmes
Choc/Yummy: chocolate swiss roll
Mood: stressed to the max
Writing: nothing
Reading: nothing today
RSI/FMS: sore and tired


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!