A lot can happen in a week. This COVID-19 business certainly continues to explode, and about the time I was supposed to be getting out of my quarantine period, the Tennessee Governor made the Safer at Home order mandatory. Or as mandatory as he could without really forcing anybody to do anything. Unless the plan is to go out and goof off, however, there’s plenty of leeway for most of normal life in Executive Order 22, the original order amended to become mandatory. Paragraph 6 of Attachment A gives a lot of reasons to be out and about, so it’s not like we’re under a real lockdown or anything.
Meanwhile, I’m still trying to get back into something that resembles a routine while also pushing forward with this darned book of mine.
The Beginnings Of A New Routine.
The biggest issue in terms of getting on with finishing this – hopefully final – self-edit cycle has been access to the computer. Mornings here had developed along the lines of having breakfast, cleaning up, then giving the kids time to do some of the assigned on-line schoolwork, and some more time to read, then lunch. After lunch clean up is when they’d get some managed free time, and frequently access to the computer is on their list of demands.
This means that the only reliable time I could get was the 45-minute period when they were reading. There’s a definite limit to what can be achieved in that time. Very little time could be guaranteed in the afternoon, and by the evening my brain’s pretty well buggered, so being creative and attentive enough to get any editing done is simply not going to happen.
Crack of Dawn.
So in the middle of the week I started waking up at 05:10. I’m not the fastest creature in the world first thing in the morning, but I can get everything I need taken care of, up to and including a cup of coffee, and be at work by 06:00, which has so far meant I can count on a good hour before being interrupted, distracted.
Progress Report.
Last week I’d recorded just scene one of Chapter 1 and finished incorporating the notes for that same Chapter. Since then I’ve recorded the second scene and incorporated notes right through to almost the middle of Chapter 4. Additional recording hasn’t been possible due to the interruptions and distractions associated with a complete lack of peace and quiet.
I think I can improve on this past week’s progress and, hopefully, be as far as Chapter 8 next week. In terms of word-count, this is about half-way through the book, so if I make it that far, two more weeks and the cycle is complete. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Other than that, I think I’ve finally settled on a title for this novel. Breaking news, right?
Here’s the third title nominee:
The New Plan.
This has taken so long and the response to my call for Beta Readers in September of last year was so disappointing, I’ve decided to skip out on getting Betas for this book. Once this edit is complete, I’ll give it one last readthrough to make sure there’s nothing glaring, then I’ll try to scrape together enough money to get it professionally edited.
How much will that cost?
From what I’ve been able to gather, it depends on the editor you choose and the type of edit. I think it would be awesome to get a Developmental Edit done, but a Copy Edit is probably going to be the best I can afford. At between $0.02 and $0.04 per word, my current estimate is $2,650 but that’ll change when I finish this edit and the following readthrough checkup – both of them are likely to change the final word count.
So… Now What?
Next week I intend on getting back to my journaling effort, which as an established habit should provide the foundation to getting back to meditating and the gratitude journal. Together those habits will hopefully provide enough of a structure to get back to the AIP diet. My dietary habits from Christmas survived January because of Disney, and then survived February because I was getting the plans together to go on AIP. What about March? Well, you could check out why I hit the pause button, or how crazy days have been lately.
This is all against the backdrop of COVID-19 and none of my plans are anything I’m going to insist on. The world is changing and we all need to be flexible, because you either bend with the breeze or you break.
Let’s all hope for some good news this week, although I have no idea where something like that might come from.
Meantime, stay safe and have a great week.
Categories: COVID-19, My Life, The Old Man, Time Management, Title Changes
Andrew Wellington 
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