Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1309:
Very pleased that yesterday I did, in fact, start editing. I made sure that I only worked for about 20 minutes at a time, taking breaks where I rested my hand. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get a whole lot accomplished, but I did make it through short chapter and half way through the next chapter. My ultimate goal is to hold the final manuscript to 100,000 words or less (It is currently at 97,000 words, but the last couple of chapters aren’t written) so my daily objective is to cut whenever I can. However, there are also a number of notes I’ve taken about places where I should do some adding, so this may be a goal I can’t reach. However, after cutting and adding yesterday, I ended up with a 94 additional words. And, while my hand did ache from time to time during the day, it wasn’t aching at the end of the day, which was a great improvement.
I got in both walks yesterday, as the day remained chilly but sunny. Because my late afternoon call went long, I took the second walk after dinner. Quite pleasant now that the days are longer and with daylight savings time, so that may be my new pattern.
Today it is supposed to get even warmer, and sunny all day, so I hope to get some time sitting outside (on my editing breaks?) Not going to walk this morning because I am finally working to clean up all the tracked in mud on floors and furniture covers, plus a thorough clean of kitchen, so that I have already spent nearly an hour and have at least another hour of work to do.
But first, going to start editing after posting this.
Loved these flowers. Some sort of geranium?
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Those don't look like geranium leaves, but there are many types of geranium
I’m not sure, but what a gorgeous color!