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Posts Tagged ‘planning’

Happy New Year!

Posted in A writer's life, am wrinting, Australian author, Trying to focus, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

I’m up reasonably early on the 1st of January. I managed to sleep later than normal. Yay!

Happy New Year! May 2026 fulfill your hopes and dreams.

I hope for peace and good sense to prevail the world over. I want to be optimistic for the future of the world. Being a science fiction (and fantasy) aficcionado and Star Trek fan, I have had faith in Humankind and that we will move beyond wars and famine and that we will survive into the future. However, I admit that that faith has been shaken of late.

I hope for me that I can find that optimism again. That my faith in us will be restored.

Now for more mundane things.

I have to admit I piked on staying up until 12 and left the party around 10pm. We had a family get together.

Now I just don’t want to eat more food! Everything was delicious but now I have to think about the waistline. I wish it was called the wasteline and I could watch myself waistline waste away but alas…

This morning, I took my blood pressure reading before the meds kicked in and well that’s not good is it? I thought cutting back salt was going to help there but health wise I’ve been a bit over the place. Next in the queue is a blood test scheduled for next week. I’ve been having sleep disturbances between 1-3 am most nights lately, which is very annoying. Nothing too serious except I feel like my head is in a paper bag most of the day. Aching and tingling in the fingers and toes, so much so that I have to get up and take painkillers at night, tired, fatigued, etc. I have sub-clinical Hashimotos and I have these flare ups where I gain weight, go through the fatigue, sluggishness etc and then when I’m tested they say my thyroid is reading normal. This has been going on for 10 years, since I was first diagnosed (confirmed through blood test and identification of antibodies). The other not so interesting thing is the inflammation where my partial knee replacements are. At first I thought they were loosening and the specialist thought not. However, he is monitoring six monthly, unless I have extreme pain. Each day I’m noticing it is harder to move around and my knees are stiff and sore. So after this post is done I’m going for a walk. Best thing to get the joints warm.

The new spectacles after surgery were a bit hard to deal with at first. Multifocals and two very divergent eyes now. Left eye is still seeing blurry but better than when I first developed a full thickness macular hole in August. I can report that my eyes and brain are getting used to the new glasses but when I take them off my eyes/brain go what the hell!

I have received print versions of The Prudential Light. My daughter-in-law picked up an issue with one of the Chinese characters in the book. Two missing strokes that were wiped when I did ‘remove background’. I have replaced that image with a new one and uploaded new versions everywhere. I had to redo the hardback versions because I had matt finish on the cover instead of gloss and I had gloss finish on the other hardback versions. Paperback is matt finish. That was completed this morning.

There are four different sets of Chinese characters in the book, drawn by a friend, who is a scholar of Chinese art. Modern Chinese characters have been simplified and the ones in The Prudential Light are meant to be traditional and hopefully ones in use in 1840s. As for the pinyin version, I cannot tell you if I have stuck to the Cantonese pinyin or strayed to the Mandarin. Brain is not functional. Pinyin is the romanised version of the word to help with pronunciation. Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages but use the same characters.

Yesterday I posted my writing to do list. I also reorganised my working space. (I’m laughing because I’m on my couch with the lap top on my lap). I bought and assembled a hutch. I wish I’d taken before and aftershots. I’m camped out in my bedroom for another nine months I guess while my grandkids are living here. While I had a desk, I had a great big mess there. Along with my day job work space and my imac working space, there was just a junk yard of crap, scribbled on manuscript pages, pens (which I could never find, other desk junk. With a hutch I can lift things up, put them where I can find them. I’m so pleased with it now. I have so many pens and I threw away the ones that don’t work. So diligent of me.

I’ve also put up my planner on the wall. Time to commit to writing on the planner and getting some work done on the books I want to write. While I have a kind of full and hectic schedule for writing new books, I have some that are already written and I have to find time to tweak/revise them and send them out for submission. If I have no luck getting an agent, I guess they will be self published too by the end of the year. I was also wishing I could fit a nice epic fantasy series in my schedule too. I also mulled the idea of retiring Dani Kristoff–where I write paranormal romance with sorcerer’s and werewolves and witches under that name. It might be my lack of promotion but they are not as popular as the Dragon Wine series and Cry Havoc. Another novel I want to write is a sci fi romance that has been in my brain since the early days. So that might fill the Dani Kristoff slot in my schedule.

Who knows…the future is yet to be written.

Best wishes to all.

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To do lists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

There are to do lists and there are TO DO LISTS.

I find them helpful, even though I don’t use them all the time.

The big 100 days to do list fall in a heap for me. I have so many things I want to do that there are too many things to keep track of.

On work days, I use my calendar to manage the things I should be doing. That’s because in my day job I only work two days so I need a way to keep track because I forget inbetween the weeks.

On other days, well it depends on what I have on, what I want to achieve. Between Christmas and New Year I generally switch off so to do lists go out the window unless I’m hosting a deck party. Parties need to do lists. How else can you delegate?

Generally though if I am not doing the day job, I need a to do list to set myself goals or achieve something. Otherwise the day can just fritter away with a little bit of this, some couch/streaming etc. If I’m struggling there might be one or two things on my to do list.

Today (example only)

  • write a blog post
  • write Gentleman Magician for an hour
  • cook dinner.

Now I have done other things. I picked up my glasses, I’ve had lunch with Rob, I went to the supermarket. I’ve also fixed a Chinese character in The Prudential Light, uploaded new print files and new ebook files. They are additional things.

Whether I will write today remains to be seen. I’m giving my brain a rest.

However, that being said, to do lists work for me when I’m enthusiastic, need to get things done. If I’m not enthusiastic, then I’ll put one thing on that to do list that is important for me, just to get me going.

Motivation can sometimes be thin on the ground. There is a push pull-thing going on with what I want to do and making the effort to do them.

I’ve bought a wall planner and a desk planner. I’m going to fix up my workspace tomorrow when the new hutch arrives for my desk. I want to achieve a lot in 2026. However, sometimes it’s hard.

A wall planner is one massive to do list really.

The downside for to do list though can be where you do things not on your to do list. Or as you are marking things off, you add things you forgot! The list doesn’t get smaller.

Anyway, here are my writing to dos for 2026. Wish me luck.

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Finding focus

Posted in To do lists, Writing, tagged , , on February 13, 2014| 2 Comments »

So after being a time fritterer (see earlier post), I’ve got into a rhythm. I  have been writing for days and I don’t feel guilty anymore about not being focussed. I go back to work on Monday, but I can do so without being ashamed.

I finished a revision of two novels. One being 35,000 words and the other 57,000 words. Compared to one of my fat fantasies, they are small, but still a lot of work.

As you see from yesterday’s post, I’m back onto another MS, Emerald Fire, which I haven’t opened in two years and only partly drafted. When drafting that I wanted to make sure I could do something, that is, complete the plot. Then I realised it was missing something, the people interaction so I put it away with the intention of going back to it. As Ruby Heart hasn’t found a home and it’s the second part of that, there wasn’t much hurry.

I’ve decided this is to be my writing year, but I note in the schedule that besides the day job I have two overseas trips planned. It’s starting to get crowded. At least the Aurealis Award judging is done. Then again I realise I did say I would do the accounts for Conflux and present at the writers day. But both of those are relatively small things. Mmm actually I realise I committed to doing something else. Sigh. Crazy in the head.

I also sat down and wrote up my to do stuff on my white board. I have set myself the task of writing at least two more novels in the current series. Cough. Oh dear. I’ve left one off. Make that three! That’s a 35,000, 56,000 and a 80,000 word novel. I also have a wishlist in there of at least commencing either a Scottish historical or Regency Romance, but there is no hurry on those as they are dream projects that I would like to tackle, rather than what I think I must tackle. I also have a couple of MSs to revise in my pipeline, but they are on a as needs basis. And if by any chance I do all those, I have some other projects in the pipeline and bugger Into the Dark Glass is to be revised/rewritten and I completely forgot about that. MMMM.

So really, I’m not really looking around for something to do. I find the white board helps me focus on what I need to do. Then again I have ignored the thing on many occasion. Last year I knew I was going to be terribly busy so I bought a scheduler to put on the wall to map out everything (like a white board but with days). I was so busy I didn’t even open it and now it is rubbish because it was for 2013.

Anyhow, I’m taking the day off today and going visiting. I’ll be back in the grind tomorrow, or this evening if I have any oompf left. As I live with a writer, he perfectly understands if I am attached to my laptop. I love it.

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