The revisions are in! Time to take a breath while my lovely ed reads the book with her red pen poised. So. Things on my list for next two days apart from napping?

* Organise all of my notes and scribbled pieces of dialogue and ideas for this book. I have a big box file for each book and everything goes in there, including print outs of deleted scenes [ some of which is good stuff and perhaps could be recycled ], images, notes, articles and character profiles. Everything. At some point there will not be enough space on my shelves for all of the boxes but right now that works for me. Under my contract I have to keep one copy of each book which is accepted. That print out goes in the box.

* Check my back up of this book at the first revision stage. I am totally paranoid. USB stick for daily backups. Automatic daily loading of any document I change to my home TeraByte server in another room [ which has its own data recovery backup]. And I also use Windows SkyDrive for Internet backup – this is free up to 25 GigaBytes and is another way of accessing my docs from any pc/laptop/organiser, anywhere.   I have tried GoogleDocs but not so user friendly.  Did I mention I was paranoid?

*Catch up with all of the admin which has been piling up in a basket on the bookshelf behind me so it would not distract me. Receipts, tax spreadsheets, post, community etc

*Go through a manuscript I have to critique and start making notes.

*Catch up with all of the Internet articles and craft posts I have added to my favourites or printed out while in revision mode to be read later. This is later. Some are filling the well for another “book of my heart” which is sitting on the back burner noodling away inside my brain box.

* Start thinking about new story idea about a chocolatier and coffee chain owner. Scribble down notes and ideas as they come along. This is  going to be hoot of a fun book to write and hopefully to read.

* Put a big chart of next 3 months up on my white board. Yes, May does seem a long time away but not when you have the 12 weeks in front of you and know what you want to achieve in that time frame.

I had a quick look at my diary last night and there are big chunks already out around late April – Royal Wedding and Easter – and again in mid May for 3 weeks holidays in Greece and home. Total working time available is probably about 8 weeks. EEK.

All of which screams that I need to be clever re deadlines, and slots for submissions and editor feedback etc to avoid stress and burn out.

*Oh – and I might wave at the ironing as I go past.

Quote of the day: “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”

Bette Davis