Tues. March 4, 2025: Working Through
image courtesy of Satheesh Sankaran via pixabay.comTuesday, March 4, 2025
Waxing Moon
Venus Retrograde
Cloudy and raw
Peter Bowerman, of the Well-Fed Writer, is retiring. His work gave me the courage to strike out as a freelancer after I aged out of working in technical theatre. I am honored to be included in this tribute to him, found here.
You can find the Community Tarot Reading for the Week up on the Cerridwen’s Cottage site here. We are using the Midnight City Tarot deck and the City of Dreams Oracle deck this month, both very NYC-centric. I love Jackie Franco’s work, and adore these two decks.
Here’s a moving piece from someone who decided to leave 18F rather than submit to the illegal activities. It’s incredibly precise, well-written, and personal. I encourage you to read “Moving on from 18f” here. Thanks to the Mastodon colleague who shared this.
Friday morning, I put in my request for my next review assignments. The next John Hopkins survey came through, part of the long term COVID effects study, and I filled that out. I filled out a survey about revitalizing downtown.
I drove to the library – the car worked just fine. Maybe we really have fixed it. Dropped off a few books. Picked up a big stack of books that came in for me.
Hauled them home, got everything sorted out. Some research books came in for the ghostwriting assignment, some other background came in that I will go over in case the second anthology story needs some edits. The library asked people to fill out slips about what the library and its services/programs mean as they put together their funding proposal next year. I wrote practically an essay, detailing the different things they offer and how important they were to different parts of my life.
Basked in the sunshine like a cat for a little bit.
In the early afternoon, I attended a webinar on ZOOM for the Creative Capital grant and for their new State of the Art awards. It’s the same application for both. The Creative Capital grant is far larger, but there will be two State of the Art awards in each state, for 100 additional awards, at 10K. So yes, I’m going to throw my hat in the ring for both. (I can only get one, and it’s one-off, but why not try). These grants are fully funded already, and not dependent on Federal money that could get yanked at any moment. I have most of the materials already prepared for the project I want to pitch. All I have to do is update the work sample with new script pages.
A rush coverage came in, and I grabbed it. It was decent enough money to make it worthwhile, and it would cover the Chewy order I needed to put in. That took the bulk of the afternoon. Since I expected to be paid for the coverage by Monday (even though it was the only coverage for the entire pay period), I made that a priority over the ghostwriting.
Cooked a nice dinner and finished reading Michael Riedel’s RAZZLE DAZZLE, which overlaps SINGULAR SENSATION a little bit in the 90’s. A lot of the stories are from before I worked in theatre, when I was just a delighted audience member. Some of it was from my early career days, but I was still working off and off-off and off-off-so-far-off Broadway that I’d heard some of the stories, but they didn’t have the same kind of meaning to me as when I was working in the district. It’s still very interesting.
It’s good background and texture material when Nina Bell makes the transition from off-Broadway to Broadway a few books down the line.
Speaking of Nina, I got my Hoopla report for January, and that series is getting a lot of reads. Since I’m paid per read, it’s encouraging. Definitely motivation to get VICIOUS CRITIC done and out. Since I’m completely restructuring the end of CRITIC, though, it’s taking longer than I would like. Doing it well matters more than doing it fast.
Was assigned the next books for review.
The economic blackout for Feb. 28 wasn’t difficult. I mean, for the foreseeable future, until I land some more clients, I’m only buying essentials and paying bills. And doing things like renewing my driver’s license. People who claim it doesn’t matter can do what they want. I don’t buy that much nonessential anyway, except for books and things at a place like Wild Soul River, to support friends. And I happen to think books are essential, which is why I use the library so often.
The bad behavior by That Thing, Sidekick Cracker, and Secretary Spineless towards Zelenskyy was disgusting. It says to the world that not only are the people who claim they’re in charge untrustworthy and without the basic manners required for international diplomacy, but as far as they’re concerned, we are now an annex of Russia and put Russia’s interests first. Absolutely revolting.
A colleague sent an email about how disgusted she was and how comforting she found X,Y, Z posts on Substack. I responded with informational links and my reasons for not reading, subscribing, or sharing anything on Substack. She thanked me for the information and, a few minutes later, sent me another article . . .on Substack. Sigh.
No, I didn’t read any of them. What part of “I don’t read it if it’s on Substack because clicking and reading ANYTHING there, even if it’s not a paid subscription, means supporting their monetization of hate” is too hard to understand?
This person’s heart is in the right place (always, a truly wonderful human being), but our logics run on different tracks.
Several people whose work I would read if it wasn’t on Substack have moved in the past few days, and I’m subscribing as I find out about it.
Slept reasonably well Friday into Saturday. Woke up around 4:30, a big improvement over 1:30, and fell back asleep quickly. Got up a little later than usual, much to the dismay of the cats.
Bea taught Tessa to play with Bea’s favorite interactive toy, and they are having the best time together.
My mom’s social security cleared and is safely in the bank account, which takes a huge amount of pressure off me for the coming week.
An agent opened queries for the first 10 days of the month, so I considered pitching CAST IRON MURDER to her, since it fits her guidelines. It should have gone out on regular submission late last year, and I kept putting it off. I have the bits and bobs for the submission package; it’s just uploading them and tweaking the cover letter. That book is somewhat suited to traditional publishing, provided they don’t want to edit the COVID pandemic out of it, since that’s integral to the plot and the series arc.
Running errands on Friday, it was still coldish, but sunny, and smelled like spring. When I woke up on Saturday, it had snowed again. But the sun came out, it was supposed to warm up, then rain in the afternoon, then plunge back down into the ick.
I put in the Chewy order early on Saturday morning. Those little monsters eat a lot! They also have spring fever, are starting to shed, and are doing the semi-annual fur ball hurling contest. Fun times.
Wrote out checks for some bills and rent. It was easier to run errands on foot, so I hiked down to the post office to mail everything, and ran a few other errands on the way back. The sun was gone and it was raining pretty hard by the time I headed out. But it was still faster on foot than driving and parking and all the rest.
Just after I came home, it started to snow. The prediction was “little to no accumulation.” Ummm – it snowed heavily for hours. It stuck.
I read the Agatha Christie for the month’s book club – THREE ACT TRAGEDY. I enjoyed it, to a point, but I got a little too far ahead of it.
I had zero motivation to do any work.
However, I pulled up my socks, as they say, and went back to work on the ghostwriting assignment. I did a few hours of work on it, rearranging things a bit and working on the next section. At this point, I have absolutely no idea what they want, since the notes are so often in conflict. I ask questions, I integrate answers, then I’m told I didn’t follow instructions. It’s exhausting. Figured out how much more I needed to do on Sunday and Monday to give me Tuesday for a polish and get it off my desk on Wednesday, when it’s due. I’m sure they won’t want to go further, so then we’ll invoice, and they’ll pay me the partial at the test rate, and we both move on. They do a huge amount of work in a very short amount of time (the company’s put out over 150 books since 2019). They’ve got a well-oiled machine, and good for them. I talked to a colleague who worked for a different packager, and the experience was very similar: Tight deadlines, conflicting notes by the reviewing committee, them acting like conversations about specific points never happened. Par for the course, I guess. It’s been quite a few years since I did this type of work, and I had blocked out a good many of the challenges, mostly remembering the pleasure of the work.
Cooked dinner, read for pleasure in the evening.
Did not want to get up on Sunday, but did. After breakfast, I spent most of the day on the ghostwriting assignment, and got some solid work in. It doesn’t sing yet, but I’m closer.
I woke up on Monday to find they’d paid me for the previous assignment, so that’s a relief, in spite of the processing fee. I also managed to renew my driver’s license online, no muss, no fuss. I have the letter to carry in my wallet if the physical license doesn’t get here by my birthday next week.
Tinkered around with a few things before logging on to do the test of the Zoom account for Wednesday’s class. It did not work. The person with whom I’d set the appointment to sort it was unavailable (in spite of the appointment). Sigh. Yes, Venus is retrograde, and Mercury’s retrograde is coming in fast. But we got it sorted out in the afternoon. We hope!
Two “opportunities” landed in my inbox over the weekend. One for a scriptwriter who could guarantee everything going viral. Um, not how that works. AND this place wanted the first 10 scripts turned around in 24 hours. For absolutely insulting money. Nope. The other was another one of the book packagers, this time for romance, and the usual write 15,000 words in a week, but only get paid $150. No, thank you. That’s a penny a word, for an incredibly intense amount of work in a week. No.
I managed to get a query out to an agent. It was straightforward. I had all the bits, it was just uploading them properly.
I did the rounds of my elected officials – three times, on three different topics.
The library cohort meeting was good. I feel like I learned a lot. The other Berkshire member and I are going to figure out a way to visit back and forth in the spring, when the weather is better. We’re only about an hour apart.
The problematic client paid. Even though it wasn’t much, every bit helps. I also used up a gift card from another client to treat myself to something that will be here in time for my birthday.
Definitely hard to settle down and focus on work after such a busy morning!
I got out a requested script (my proposal made the first cut, now they want the script), and also got out the application to Creative Capital.
Then, it was time to settle into the ghostwriting. I didn’t get as far ahead as I hoped (I shouldn’t have started so late in the day). But I did rewrite a bunch of material and up the ante. I woke up in the night realizing I needed to add in something else early on, so I have to rearrange some more chapters today. I HAVE to finish it today, so I can polish it and get it off by deadline tomorrow.
Cooked a late dinner, and was too tired to read at night. Went to bed early, slept for 2 hours, was wide awake, finally got back to sleep, but woke up early.
I need to take care of a few things in and around the ghostwriting, but the bulk of the day will be about that, with a few breaks to tweak the material for tomorrow’s screenwriting workshop. I won’t be able to start attending tarot circle again until April, but I hope to stop by the store one day and buy a little something as a treat for me and to support them.
Somehow, it will all work, even if I’m vague on the details right now.
Later in the week, when the ghostwriting is out the door, I will tweak the rest of the class slides for the remaining sessions and work on some grant proposals, my next review assignments, the contest entries, and send out some more LOIs.
Onward!
