Got up, made two cups of tea and drank both while checking my emails and starting to edit a short story. Not sure what time that was, as I put my watch down on Sunday and couldn’t find it. Being purple it’s hard to spot if it’s on my battered kindle, or a discarded jumper.
7.19 Made two cups of tea. Took one in to my husband who was just waking up. Drank the other as I continued editing. Soon Gary joined me in the shared office and started work on more of his amazing 360 images.
9.30 ish Gary brought me a cup of tea, reminded me I had an appointment at 10.06.
10.04 Blood test. Yep, I got in early! Just a routine check thing, and they only took about a spoonful, but look at the impressive size of the dressing! (Sorry about the tea stain)
10.07 Decided to visit all three churches in Lee-on-the-Solent to see how easy it would be to walk in and steal the silver. I was pleased to find them all open, and to all have nice looking crosses, candlesticks, flower arrangements and the like. None of it looked to be made from precious metal, or to have any value other than the spiritual kind, so I left empty handed.
11.30 Home for tea and breakfast.
12.00 Checked my emails again. Still no acceptances or rejections from the magazine editors I regularly submit to. There wasn’t for the whole day, and that’s extremely typical. There were messages from my lovely writing buddies with feedback though, so I continued editing, taking their comments into account, all afternoon – with the odd tea break of course. Again that’s typical, as writing new words is only a small part of a writer’s job, particularly when it comes to novels.
18.00 Cooked dinner, plus some meals to freeze. When I get going on a novel I sometimes have long writing spells, so it’s useful to have something ready prepared. The church visits were research for the first scene in the second book of my Little Mallow cozy crime series and I hope to start writing that fairly soon. Book 1 is almost ready to go out to publishers – part of the editing I worked on was the dreaded synopsis which most publishers ask for. These are HARD as you have a limited word count, often just one page, to explain the plot, mention all the major characters, give the main twists and reveal the ending. Not easy when it took 80,000 words to do that in the book.
20.00 Switched from tea to wine and watched Only Connect, University Challenge and the new Chris Packham documentary. Don’t judge me. Other than a few episodes of SpringWatch, that’s the first TV I’ve watched since the coronation.