This has turned out to be a funny old week, lots of plans, plotting and determination all scuttled by yet another virus. Reminding me that if I miss my annual flu jab again this year, I should be taken away and shot!

For some reason I kept putting it off last year and never got around to it for the first time since I turned 60. I don’t know if it’s supposed to combat all viruses, but it certainly seems to.

So this is the second virus that has sought me out in the space of just a few weeks and this one was pretty nasty. At one point I was shivering so much, I just couldn’t get warm, so my temperature must have been through the roof.

Consequently, nothing much was accomplished that day. On day two, all I wanted to do was sleep, but I did manage to check my emails only to discover that Story Cartel had rejected my upload. Apparently, converting my Word doc. file to a mobi had not been successful. I had a look and saw immediately what they meant. There were huge gaps everywhere, not good at all. What on earth had the converter done to my file?

So I reformatted the file and tried again. Same result. I decided I was far too ill to bust my brains with it and went and had a nap.

Day three brought another email from Story Cartel suggesting several different solutions, which I dutifully tried to no avail. This is the point where I normally give up, wishing for the millionth time that my PC had an idiot button especially for dummies like me.

 

On a lighter note, I was browsing Goodreads and noticed that Book and Blog Tours were being talked about a lot, so I joined the discussion, realised what an opportunity they could be and ended up volunteering. I can write reviews and even host authors on our blog, so what could go wrong?

You never know, if I am any good at it I might end up having one myself! That’s if I ever finish my book 9Lives!

 

I also had another, more depressing email from Richard and Judy (the book club). I had submitted 9Lives in the hope that if it was good enough it would be shortlisted, but it wasn’t. Their email was very nice though. I haven’t allowed myself to be downhearted; all it means is that I will have to do some careful revising. You can tell that I am a half full sort of person, can’t you?

 

Day four found me staring at the mess that was camouflaging my desk, realising that I needed to do some organising. I have trouble working in chaos, so forsaking my book yet again, I tried to tidy up. But it didn’t take me long to realise that a simply tidy was not going to achieve anything. Radical organisation was needed to create some kind of filing system for the huge pile of notes that I have been hoarding.

I was feeling better by then, and so was the weather, so I walked down to my local office supply shop, (I think they call themselves Stay-shon-ary) to see if they had any solutions. I had a vague idea of what was needed, based on my old life as an administrator. You simply had to keep on top of everything in that job, for if you didn’t, all kinds of trouble would ensue. I always kept a small flip top box with index cards, which made following up and checking important details very easy and quick!  And I never forgot anything important!

I found just what I needed, so hopefully sorting out my pile of chaos would be just as easy. So although I have not followed my regime of at least 500 words a day for almost a week, I might just have achieved something useful. After all, there’s not much point making lots of useful notes, if you can’t access the information quickly so I don’t feel too guilty…

See you all next week…

Jay