Busy bee

Somehow I managed to finish the book proposal today. I drafted the bulk of it on Sunday and then wrote a draft introduction today of around 1,000 words. I'm quite pleased with what I've submitted and I'm confident it will pass muster with the publisher. They've already acknowledged receipt and said I will hear next week if I get the contract. Fingers crossed.

In between I've crammed in no less than 3 medical appointments - 2 check-ups and my flu jab. I also wasted 30 minutes waiting around in the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions, only to be told there is a supply problem for my epilepsy medication. Great. Now I have to go to another chemist tomorrow to collect half my tablets. The rest I can't get at all. I feel a rant coming on - time to pick up the phone and berate Big Pharma for putting me at risk of seizures if I can't get my meds...

I got a commission from a national newspaper yesterday so this afternoon and this evening has been spent researching and interviewing. My deadline is lunchtime tomorrow, giving me not a huge amount of time to pull it all together and write it up. Except I have to use that time to chase my meds at the other chemist as they will only hold the tablets until lunchtime. I sense a major conflict of interests approaching and probably a headache too.

The afternoon will be filled seeing my GP, again. And queuing at the hospital for routine yearly blood tests. I lead such an exciting life...

Faffing, features, phone calls...

Despite the enormous amount of pressure I am under to hit a lot of deadlines in a very short space of time, I am doing very well at skiving and procrastinating. Fact is, I perform best when the deadline is imminent. So even though the nightmare handbook I agreed to edit has a deadline just 10 days away, needless to say I have barely started it. This being the same handbook I moaned about on Tuesday...

I have written most of one of my features for a women's mag. I had 30 minutes of interview on my new toy, which is proving to have been a sound investment (pardon the pun), plus a bunch of notes. I wrote up 2/3rds from the notes, doing the quotes from recall, and was relieved that I had nailed them pretty accurately when I played the interview back. While my epilepsy causes me vocabulary problems occasionally, which is very distressing when you work with words for a living, fortunately it has not damaged my memory function too much. But I digress - I'll finish up the interview tomorrow and mail it to the ed, so it will be filed well before deadline. Leaving me just the other feature plus the handbook that I really do not want to edit.

Too late, I have committed to this project, more fool me. But I swear this will be last one I do for this particular publisher. The rate they offer is ridiculously low for the amount of effort they expect. Not even if it means starving in a garret would I do another book for them. Not that I'll starve when my beloved P takes such good care of me, but you get the idea.

I had a hilarious phone conference this morning with a company that I ranted about in a newspaper column last week. The PR person has been falling over himself to butter me up after I gave such bad press, so I agreed to participate in the call so they could solve my problems. It was utterly pointless. Their techy geek talked to me as if I were 3 years old and explained that I needed to reset various settings on my PC to resolve the issues I'd experienced. He wasn't telling me anything new - what he suggested was precisely what I had complained about having to do in the original article! Never mind. I guess he meant well. And I have been offered vast amounts of free kit to make up for my poor experience. One of the perks of hacking...

Procrastination

I'm having a phone-phobic day. I'm not comfortable with the phone at the best of times unless speaking to people I know very well. My mobile lies in a dark corner gathering dust, only to be used to call a cab or for some other emergency. Very few people have my mobile number - I operate on the basis that people can contact me by email, or landline if they need to speak to me.

Today I have a deadline looming and I really ought to be on the blower, chasing my contacts but I just can't bring myself to pick up the receiver and dial. I need to file tomorrow, but procrastination seems more attractive.

All the editing work has dried up for now. For once I am glad. It means I can go shopping on Friday. And I do mean shopping. Proper shopping, as opposed to the grocery run. It's been 3 months since I last trawled the clothes shops and, as Morrissey famously sang, I haven't got a stitch to wear.

The naked wordsmith - sounds like the title for a book....

Long bad Friday

I am such an idiot. I knew 2 weeks ago that today would be the deadline for producing a whole month's round-up of UK news stories for one of the publications I write for. It's the first time I'll be doing this column and I agreed with the editor that I'd file at the last minute so it would be as up to date as possible.

Did I use the intervening 2 weeks to collect possible stories? Did I hell... Now I have to spend my day trawling a whole month's worth of old news looking for the interesting bits. I am kicking myself. And I only need to produce 1,000 words. It's going to be huge effort for little reward, given the time I'll need to devote to this.

Something tells me it's going to be a long day...