Sunday, August 26, 2018

ROW80 Sunday, Week 9: Ooofta!

We came home last Saturday after two weeks on the road. Oofta! Didn't really remember how much time it takes to reconnect! So here's my update, definitely a little different.

WRITING. No writing for the first half of the week to speak of. Even though I wrote every day when we were travelling, the first 3 days home = zip! Feel like I'm working with some kind of heavy duty farm equipment to organize & draft chapters with scenes out of sequence. Pretty good progress overall the last 4 days with tighter scenes (and fun adding suspense and romance), but a drop in word count as I hit that delete button.

EDITING (This section is for self-publishing nerds). Someone suggested that self-publishing writers should routinely update that list of 'other books by' and back matter. I thought that was a good idea for my four books. So, 2 done and 2 to go.

Probably burned a good 10 hours this week on attempting to move my paperback version of Standing Stones from Create Space to Amazon. Moving the updated kindle version worked just fine. Here's an excellent background article from Amy Collins on Joel Friedlander's The Book Designer on why we might do this, although NotJohn strongly recommends staying with CS for paperbacks. So, I'm persevering, though I ran into some formatting issues (translating from Kindle to paperback, retyping toc, getting Amazon's paperback template downloaded and functional [Word kept giving me a permission error so I exported my Word file into PDF format and back]. Content is fine. Now just going chapter by chapter to check layout (I'm at chapter 24 out of 62).  Of course, once I'm done, Amazon says we'll need to wait 72 hours before we know if our upload worked. And, I'm not certain about this, but I think I'll have to order a physical proof for the paperback.

READING. Really enjoying reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played with Fire; it's pretty dark, but compelling. And for pure escape, Ava Stones, My Favorite Major. Pondering point-of-view still, as IF I write from the female lead for my romantic suspense, how will readers know what my male character is thinking and feeling?

JUST FOR FUN, made a meme.

Lion we saw at Calgary Zoo (August 2018)
OTHER: This afternoon, took a two-hour shopping break with my daughter which turned into a 5-hour marathon involving an exploding toilet, so I'm skipping goal setting for the coming week. Know that I'm going to do the best possible. Writers' group meets Tuesday night, and I'm ready.

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4 comments:

  1. I hear you with the post-trip recovery, Beth. You're stepping forward despite the draw of "settle in and find your stride again" that always follows long adventures away. It happens, and the best you can do is the best to be done.

    Exploding toilets? *shudders* Hope that's settled now and all is well.

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    1. Thank you for visiting, Eden. As busy as you are, I really appreciate it. Well, this indie writer is eye-deep in updating paperback versions to go onto the new Kindle Print. Aargh! Way too much time! Hope your week (and first days at school) go well.

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    2. I wondered about the exploding toilet as well. Sounds like a day in my life!

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  2. I have such a hard time getting back on schedule after I've come home from a trip as well. Like, it's been five weeks for me! I'm just waiting for summer to be over before I worry about whether or not I am back on track.

    I love the lion picture and your caption! It's great.

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