What ’s happening in my office?

Not my day

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:18:40 +1000

On days like today - I could quite happily throw every single computer in our house in the canal! And I know my hubby would stand by clapping too as I lug them through the house, over the deck, onto the pontoon to ‘plop’ into the water and sink down to make a coal reef!

It has been a frustrating week with first one of the 500gb hard drives dying, now my beautiful apple mac is going problems. I hate it because I am so not used to having them after making the apple switch years ago. You plug in - and they just work...until this week. I have pretty colours and lines appearing on my screen, and files missing left right and centre - the back ups failed since 10th August and in all the fuss over the dying HD we didn’t notice, so today I spend a good few hours reconstructing web sites for me and CYA from the web, back to my computer. I hope not too much else is gone - please...

OK - rant and rave over.

On a more positive note, 4 more sleeps to RWA conference in Melbourne. Wahoo! I spoke to a good friend the other night who went to San Francisco conference at the beginning of the month, and she had an absolute ball, but is still looking forward to this one, because she will know more people here and the social aspect should be fun. Remember last year? Our mask party?

Gayle and I were all dolled up in our masks for the masquerade ball? Well this year the theme is enchanted through the ages. Now I am still tossing between a Morgan - La - Fay or Alphaba ( from wicked) but since I haven’t made up my mind and there are only 4 sleeps, I’m kind of running out of time. Oh and its at the Langham Hotel again - check out the entry - such old world charm in our 5 star luxury....

Anyhow, must go and judge more CYA competition entries, after I feed the hordes for dinner.

Chatter soon.

Bye 4 now
Tina

Time management

Tue, 5 Aug 2008 11:23:13 +1000

Some days I feel like someone has done exactly like the picture above to my computer keyboard. I just can’t get to it to write, and everything else in life, the office takes precedence over my writing. While most people would think, oh that’s okay, you will get a chance to get to it, I HATE that this happens.

The time is gone - lost forever, and I am not going to get it back somehow.

So, I decided to share with you what my idea day would be like (edited owing to my children’s writing and adult writing being on the dame blog at present.)
Woke up leisurely at 7am with a nice hot chocolate (chocolate already happens, but its on the run while ironing kids uniforms etc)
On my treadmill by 8am ( yeah.. right - keep dreaming Clark!)
Showered at at my computer by 9.30am. ( Still dreaming.)
Write till 4pm when my kids come through the door, smiling and having had a great day at school . (Do you see the pigs flying across the windows yet?)
Break to make dinner, and veg out all night in front of the TV watching girlie programs, NCIS, CSI, House, Medium, Rome, Star-gate, So you think you can dance and any other trivial show I want! ( With the remote in MY hand!)
Not put on any weight while having the ideal lifestyle. ( Most important part of the whole day - other than the writing.)

See, I know, I just wish the impossible!

So I will continue to catch those 10 minutes to quickly type up 200 words when I can, when there is a replay of Avatar on and the kids are watching it AGAIN, or a few hours in the morning, in between being the home purchasing department and rushing off in the afternoon to stretch between hockey and soccer practice.
Time is precious to me as a writer. And I am learning ( slowly... I admit) I need to grab it when I can - and use it.

On a lighter note - I did Book In A Week last week with the RWA Australia, and it was grand. Only I wasn’t trying to add words, but delete them. Yesterday I drove into Brisbane and dropped off my manuscript to enter into the editors monitorship with the QWC. Wish me luck.

Tomorrow is D-Day to put that same manuscript into the post for the Hachette Monitorship, but this time, only the first 50 pages. Hold thumbs for me on that one too please.

Times up: The 50k in 30 day challenge is over!

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 16:44:12 +1000

Well I tried, and towards the end - really hard.

41 393 words achieved so I was only 8 607 words short of my target for the month.

But I have a confession: Looking at my diary, I actually only wrote 10 days out of the whole month.
Yes, only 10.
So, now I had done this exercise, I need to readdress my diary, and see why I’m only writing for so few days within a month when I thought I wrote almost every day.

Thank you to the ladies on the 50k in 30 days group, without their support, concept of running this challenge and constant motivation during the month, I’m not even sure I would have written as much.

Now they have thrown down the next challenge: July is edit month.
Going over what we wrote in June, and making it presentable enough for an editor to read. I’m taking the challenge - despite the fact that the CYA Competition deadline was 30th June, and I’m drowning in entries to process, and get out to the other volunteer judges. Oh yes, I also have my portion of the judging for CYA to complete during July, so its going to be another busy busy month at my desk.

On a lighter note: My package with Wild 4 U manuscript inside was delivered to Canada on 16th June, so now its in the offices of Harlequin Mills and Boon, on its way to the editor of Blaze. There is nothing I can do to help it any further, except just wait for them to come back to me.

This might just prove to be the hardest part of writing - the waiting...

Last ditch attempt

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:37:36 +1000

Ok, so facing reality, I’m not gonna make it... I’m on 34 207 words, that’s still 15 793 to deadline and only 10 Hours and 20 minutes to go.

But perhaps I will make the 40k mark. Let’s see...

Clawing my way...

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:02:20 +1000

29 285 down and 20 715 to go. Less than 2 days to go. I need a miracle!

But not giving up, just getting as close as I can will still be a great achievement for a month.

OK - today I should complete my YA. When I stop sobbing from this book,(its been a hard book to write, and because I have used so much of the real me as a character in the book, killing my character has been hard to do, as essentially its like killing myself - don’t worry if you don’t follow me on this one - its complicated.)

I’ll then begin my next Blaze. I’m excited about that one, so it should flow easily, poachers, rhinos and espionage, not to mention lions, elephants and stunning safari camps. Oh, and did I mention the stubborn heroine and the hunky hero?

As always, basing it loosely within my family’s camps (perhaps because then I can think of my Aunts, Uncles and cousins often even if I can’t see them). The above picture being Ivory Safari Lodge, Zimbabwe.