Jacey Bedford's Journal

This is my first book contract, so I'm trying to pace myself. I gave my editor a deadline date of December for the rewrite on Book One, which is just about finished now, though I need to let it settle for a few days before compiling it in Scrivener and rereading it all in one lump to see if it hangs together. I'm hopeful I'll be able to deliver it by 10th. (Then, of course, there may be more rewrites, and still more.)

Then I've given myself four months to slog through the first draft of the second book. My deadline for this is August, so I'd like to have a workable first draft by April in order to let it rest for a while and redraft by the beginning of August. With Worldcon and Milford I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get any much writing done in August itself, so I'm aiming to deliver at the beginning of the month.

Does this sound hopelessly optimistic?

I just read Terry Pratchett's 'Last Continent' after many years of putting it off because a) it's Rincewind and b) it's Australia. Sadly I was right to put it off. I LOVE all things Pratchett... usually... but this one just never seemed to get going. It was a collection of Rincewindly sketches shambling in no particular direction, coupled with a collection of Wizardly sketches shambling round in circles and disappearing up their own fundamentals. Very disappointing, especially when you look at the dramatic tension and narrative drive of (say) 'Lords and Ladies' or 'Night Watch'.

I feared it might be a collection of obvious Aussie jokes and... it was, from Roo Beer to a place called Didjabringabeeralong.

Having once played at a folk festival in Nannup (Western Australia) and discovered that the -up ending to town names in the local Aboriginal dialect means 'a place of...' we'd already done those jokes in the car. Nannup means 'place of rest' so:

Feetup = also - like Nannup - place of rest
Bellyup = place of eternal rest
Pissup = place of big parties
Fukup = place of mistakes ditto Mixup (and yes we got Buggerup, too)
Stickup = place of robberies
Fixup = place of repair shops
Throwup = place of unhygenic restaurants
Coughup = place where you pay your debts
Fessup = place of lawcourts

OK that's enough of that. I still haven't read Making Money - that's on my to read pile and I'm looking forward to it - though ideally I want another Sam Vimes book, and soon please.

I'm making a real effor to read more, but finding time is difficult.

Will somebody switch my brain back on to real-time, please? I missed an important meeting yesterday because I forgot. I didn't forget the meeting was on Tuesday. I forgot that yesterday was Tuesday.

Same result.

Working from home is great but you lose track of which day it which and what time it is. The number of times I've had to stop myself reaching for the phone at three in the morning...

Now that my office is more or less in good order it's time to tackle the two trays of real life stuff that got sidelined in favour of all the writing I did during April and May.

Today I managed to get eleven contracts posted off (music buisiness stuff); complete my cash flow forecast (yeah there are times when it's trickling rather than flowing but we look like we'll survive until Christmas); check the gig lists against the diary enties for anomalies (=cock-ups) found a few and corrected them.

I've managed to put all the remaining stuff into one tray.

And I made roast chicken dinner for three and set a soup going for tomorrow,

Tomorrow I have to chase up a few more contracts and work my way a little further down the tray. Plus I've promised Number One Son a trip to the supermarket for supplies. He's obviously been living in NY for too long, he was expecting to be able to buy seaweed from the supermarket in Huddersfield.  Yeah, right!

BTW do any of the North Americans out there know what he might be referring to as 'greens' which his local vegan reastaurant in NY served up lightly stir-fried? He says they look a bit like cabbage but are much more sweet and tender. That pretty well eliminates collard greens, I think, as the only time I've had them in the USA they've been dark, bitter and stringy. (I looked up collard greens and they seem to equate to 'spring greens' in the UK or what I would know as 'spring cabbage'.)

Baked: 1 oat-flour loaf; 1 cinnamon & raisin loaf; 12 of mjlayman's choc-cheese cupcakes (only I make them muffin-sized because they're yummy); 2 chocolate wacky cakes. (No there are no wacky substances in them, I don't know why they're called that - it's a recipe from our village cook book.)
Eaten: 1 muffin; 2 slices of raisin bread (the downside of baking)

Typeset: (well, desk-top published - layout and graphics) 8 page village newsletter

Revised: synopsis for Tam Lin novel

Revised and submitted: long short story for MZB Sword & Sorceress 23 (Had to chop 1500 words to bring it under the 9k word limit.) i don't expect they'll take it but it was worth a try. Guidelines if you're interested in having a pop. It's open now. Pays 5c a word.

Monday:
Done a massive amount of packing stuff up and arranging carriers to collect
Cooked a liver and bacon casserole (for dinner and for freezer)
Baked bread (in the machine)
Designed three separate adverts and sent them off to magazines

I've still got way too much to do which is probably why I'm wasting time with things like this:

I've probably visited more states than many Americans, but I've still got quite a few to go.

I wasn't sleepy at five this morning. It's ten a.m. and I am now. Strong coffee and an early night tonight I think.

But I ended up getting a lot of work done and I feel good about that!. Not writing, but day-job music agency work, which means I can give myself some time to write towards the end of the week if I can make inroads into my feeling-guilty-day-job pile.

The thing about being a musician's-agent is that  there are certain parallels to being a literary agent. Part of my job is to gently turn people away from my door. I get more approaches from hopefuls than I can possibly deal with. A couple of weeks ago I'd had eight acts call me by lunchtime on Tuesday. It would be impossible to take on all of hem--or any of them, for that matter--even though they are mostly excellent. So what makes an approach from one musician stand out above the rest? Why do I sometimes say yes to an act even though I know, strictly speaking, that I need another act on my books like a fish needs an umbrella? Maybe if I could figure that out, I could apply it to my own literary agent search, make my 'package' memorable--and no, I don't mean perfumed pink paper and purple ink) and snag my agent of choice.

Unfortunately, more often than not, with musicians... it just depends what mood I'm in when a package lands on my doormat. I suspect it's like that with Literary agents too. However professional you are, there are some days when you'll be more receptive to certain ideas than others.

I'm sure I've turned down some winning acts... in fact I know I have. Right now it could be the Beatles' reunion tour knocking on my door and I'd have to day no because I'm just too damn busy.

So next time I get a negative from a literary agent I'll just remember it's a lottery.

It's 3.35 a.m. I'm going to bed. Can anyone tell me why i push myself into the wee small hours every night? It's stupid, but ...

I've spent most of the day trying to catch up with my filing. I still have to deal with the last two week's worth of mail, the bathroom needs decorating, the kitchen needs tidying and I'm wondering what we should have for dinner tonight...

Best Beloved is outside, sawing and hammering in the barn, working on the endless restoration project.

And I should either be getting on with earning money (the real music agency day job) or writing (which is actually what I would like to be doing), but real life keeps on getting in the way.

I've decided what I really need is a wife. Applications accepted from any gender. Must be able to cook, clean, keep household accounts, answer the phone, organise clutter and undertake light office duties such as filing and trips to the post office. Clean driver's licence.. Ability to decorate and do minor household repairs would be an advantage. Some gardening in spring and summer appreciated but not essential. No bedroom duties required.

Earlier I walked down to the post box and I have to say that it is officially bloody nithering out there. I'm not surprised that  la_marquise_de_ is  wearing fashionable sausage-shaped layers.

I managed to catch up with some real work today and re-wrote one of the deleted scenes from yesterday's frollox-up, so I'm getting there.

And then this afternoon I got yanked out of the office and up into the studio to do a backing vocal for Ben Walker who is recording a new CD with Best Beloved. It's almost two years since I've raised a tonsil in anger and I have to say I really enjoyed myself. I put down three different vocal lines, the tune twice in two different octaves, and a harmony part that I worked out on the spot.

The world always feels better when you sing.

Had a rather long but very productive business meeting today with a young chap who might do some music agency work with me. If it comes of it should give me a bit more writing time.

Another good day today, work-wise (both writing and music-agency). I've given myself permission to take the evening off to watch Torchwood. Note to maeve_the_red, Doctor Frog Boy has seen the error of his ways this season, apparently. He's almost human and appears to have stopped jumping on anything female with a pulse.

I'm finally clearing some of the backlog of work. My desk isn't clear yet, but the archaeology is much reduced.

On the r.a.sf.c. group someone, Gruff, I think, suggested that working in 40 minute (or was it 45 minute) bursts was a good way to stay at peak efficiency, so I'm putting it to the test. I'm recording episodes of Star Trek TNG from bulky commercial video tapes to DVDs. (I've found some cases that take up to 10 disks in a case so I can get a whole season into the shelf-space previously occupied by one videotape - thus reducing shelf space by 8x). How does tape transfer affect my time management? easy. Episodes are approximately 40 minutes long, so I press start, set the kitchen timer and get a burst of work done for 40 minutes... and then another 40 minutes... and another.

So far it seems to be working.

I promised myself I would clear some of the backlog of work from my desk over the weekend, but Monday has come and gone and the mounds of paper are still there.

I know how long I've had something by its position in the strata on my desktop. The longer I've had it, the deeper it's embedded in the layers. I regret to say that there's still a pile from the Prechristmas Era to be dealt with.

Those of you on r.a.sf.c. will be familiar with the term 'cat vacuuming'... It's what you do when you find something, anything, to do so you can pretend to be too busy to get on with stuff you really don't want to do. On r.a.sf.c. it's usually used in terms of cat vacuuming to save you from writing. In my case the cat vacuuming is just saving me from piles of paper. I'd be happy to write if I didn't feel guilty about the archaeology on my desk.

Today my cat vacuuming actually took the form of transferring old TNG Star Trek videos to DVD (has to be done in real time). I intended to set the machine going and put my timer on for 40 minutes... but I ended up watching the double episode 'Encounter at Farpoint', the first TNG story. I was struck by how stiff the actors were in those early days and how terribly obvious the intended sexual-attraction storylines were flagged up between Crusher and Picard and Troy and Ryker. Their overdone looks of longing were almost pantomime in style, especially Troy and Ryker.

She loves you. Oh no she doesn't. Oh yes she does.

Tomorrow is 1st February. How can that be? I was going to do so much in January. Where did it go?

It happened again yesterday... every time I tried to post to LJ I got booted off and Mozilla shut down. I could reply to other people's posts and make any kind of admin changes I liked, but LJ just didn't seem to like my original thoughts. Hmm... is it trying to tell me something?

As I'm writing this I notice the Google adwords on the side of the screen. Someone is advertising Pro Singing Lessons, a 'celebrity method' which 'guarantees a full octave increase'. Yeah right. I think I'd like to point my friend Hilary at it. She's already got three and a half octaves... with four and a half she'd be supersonic. Dammit, I've got two and a half octaves myself... and it's quite enough, thank you.

People keep asking me if I miss singing and I'm never sure what to say. The odd fact is that I don't really, even though I did it professionally for twenty years. I occasionally warble round the house... and at Christmas I was tempted (for the first time ever I should say) to very bad karaoke at the village New Years party... but mostly I sit here at the keyboard and I don't pine to be on the stage.

Of course, let's be honest, as a professional singer I spent more time travelling than singing and I spent more time doing the administrative backup than travelling and singing combined. And, of course, as a tour agent for other performers I'm now hardwired to my keyboard doing just that. Perhaps my body just thinks I'm on an extended between-tours break and it expects that one day I'll leap back up on to a stage and launch into song. Well... perhaps I will. There's always the Artisan reunion tour...

But the whole point of coming off the road was that I was supposed to be able to set aside more time for writing. Having completed 50,000 words in November, pacing myself with NaNoWriMo even though I wasn't strictly speaking sticking to the rules because I was working on a piece already begun, I realise that I'm a burst writer. I'm most effective when I can devote a week or a month to nothing but hammering at the keyboard.

Problem is, the agency day job requires continuous attention, so I can't devote uninterrupted periods of time to writing. I need to retrain myself to working for four hours a day on the writing and then switching to the agency.