My Dragon is slightly sleepy after hibernation and my Dragon skills need revision. I did not think I would be looking at using it for the revision of the WIP but I find I cannot cope with so much screen time and so I have decided that a big proportion of it must be done longhand and then Draggoned in which I think is more sustainable than being welded to my screens.

Sustainability

Thanks to Paul Teague’s Podcast for suggesting I check out Creative If Podcast and giving me a title to think about relevant to my search for the exit from the dark Indie Writing Forrest I wrote myself into. And I very much want to escape, with my fiction writing projects tucked under my arm, by clambering over the wreckage of my  Blogging, Social Media and personal health and welfare sagas of 2019.

I’ve been doing this stuff awhile now

I reckon it was the summer I was 30 (25 years ago) I started to deliberately write fiction again ‘to see if I could’ (having not done so since I was a kid/teen.) It was after I finished with the OU Law degree thing, with Foot and Mouth stalking the land a second time, that I got hooked.

I have been dedicated to following this dream – and investing time and money in it – and I have created a belief in others,  who support me, that I can do this – by acting on it every day for years now. Ergo the fact that I felt crashed, and then crushed, since June 2019, is only a tiny blip in the time I have been doing this and I really won’t let that put me off.

The farm, garden, livestock and ponies, cooking and writing and studying and learning, journaling are all things that are part of me; not more one than the other.

I may not be perfect but the principles I hold are strong, and mine alone, and I take the consequences. I cannot go back and change anything at all – and even if I could I doubt I would change much, given all else, is equal. I think we are remembered for the decisions we are brave enough to take as much as those we are not; the word ‘brave’ only sticks to one of those.

I was saying, to myself, that I must ‘do the things I can do’ but I realised that means I must do the things that only I can do. Some jobs have my name on them because I am the one on site, and I don’t have dementia and am not crippled with arthritis, and because I made the decision to include the activity or responsibility in my life. This attitude is probably 50% carrot and 50% stick -and I think that is fair, after all, no one said that this is easy – well, no one I listen to anyway 🙂 It is my dream to write and publish fiction, and to keep and ride my ponies, and to farm, garden and all that those things entail…

New Year 2020. 🙂 New Energy?  Not exactly…

I took photos of farm and stock and ponies ‘beginning of the decade shots’ – see my farm blog – and then I got a flu bug ‘thing’ which took me down and out of anything outside and rendered my brain to mush.

MC’s little helpers for Jan.

(No affiliate links or relationships – personal experience only – and mine may not be yours…)

Broad Band? Is there more to say? BT is gone and EE 4 Gee is here – when it works it is better than I could have dreamed, and when it doesn’t nothing works at all – it is expensive, and it isn’t me earning it, so it comes with a load I find heavy – but without it nothing I did, and nothing I used, regularly or reliably worked.

Dropbox returns – biggest plus of the better broad band is that I can use Dropbox again which really cuts down on the camel train I need when moving around the place 🙂

Grammarly sub was renewed – never sure about this one. I feel I need it generally.

Checked out Typora – an editor that works on Windows and MAC I thought I might be able to use for whole Blog posts inc photos – can’t.

Started using Smart Edit Desk Top editor again ( Windows only)  – it is better than it was – and the best thing is the daily word counts etc – decide to keep my writing journal on it and have maintained that for 27 days plus so far – My Evernote is a mess of clippings/ tags and notes that can’t be reordered and One Note can be – well, it’s OK for Fiction and Non Fiction but it feels less Pro and more personal – and this year I want to Go Pro. LOL Of Course I Do.

Smart Edit for editing has always been my favourite – simple and fast.

Calendars

As is usual at the beginning of the year my Calendars got an overhaul and mine are a mess – Calendars – Google/ paper/Outlook/ iPhone – messy confusions and double entries.

Google calendar is OK for appointments and goal dates but manually entering detail of time on each thing takes ages and also manually entering from my paper To Done lists is a drag.

Paper desk planner – easy to have one on each desk and fill in what you do – at some point, to be meaningful, the three desk area ones need collating and the data entered elsewhere – this is clumsy – but doable; time consuming and then you have to store the things…

Wall calendar is easy for ponies and Dan and Vet appts etc and minute tracking of rides; Google is not useful for that. (Too much detail and wrong entry format for the too small to read phone and laptop interface for me)

 Journals

I still use a daily paper writing journal – I am an inveterate journal-er ( Horses/ farm/ My personal stuff/Garden/ Brewing and cider making – each interest has its own – years and years of the stuff – my Mum is the same even now she can barely hold a pen (an early image for me of her is her sat at her desk writing her diary) I got her a tablet PC for Christmas – a pen-less idea in theory more than practice but it is a talking point for us – Dementia’s a strange beast but after 80+ years of reading books reading on a Kindle is an interesting conundrum. But paper journals take time and some carrying around.

So…

Re-enter Rescue Time –  RT ticks along quietly recording what you are doing without input – you can set it to tell you when you have achieved certain things quite easily – it is no use for forward scheduling as such. RT will track offline time so if Ride is picked out as a choice then it will ask and record – ditto exercise – if not exact detail – though it can drill right down to exact documents and sites. I let it go 18 months ago when an up-date just kept flaking – so far so good this time AND it now updates my calendars with a report at the end of each day so I don’t have to collate paper desktops  – and the interface of the calendar is available for goals and appts – it will set goals anyway and I tinkered enough with it to make it relevant to my life rather than a business with staff.

This bit of software is so worth it for validation of effort and for tracking time on projects – and now it sends me a report to my calendar it does save me a job or three – at least gives me more time to free write in journals

Stuff that works is good…

Since I started this digital journey in 2011 I have procured well stocked Desk Tops and well stocked office spaces – like well shod horses with well-maintained tack they inspire confidence – nothing like tech failure of software/broad band or update hell to feel like your stirrup leather broke and your pony bucked you off, and left for home leaving, you to walk back as best you can. I find I like tinkering with new software ideas – up to a point – and that point is distraction stoppages.

My trial/near miss this month

Fictionary – this is a great idea, and genuinely story-edit biased, but, for me, not quite dynamic enough – yet. Definitely one I will look at again.

I got better news re Scrivener 3 for Windows and, having emailed them about the lack of a cloud, was told that when it is released it will be the same as the MAC version – no cloud – but can be used via Dropbox – that would save me a huge amount of copy/pasting – a Eureka moment and a half 🙂 And now I can run DB again 🙂 End on a smile 🙂

🙂

And so, am flying Dragon 🙂