Tues. March 25, 2025: Sometimes You Gotta Roll the Boulder Uphill

image courtesy of  Mohamed Hassan via pixabay.com

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Waning Moon

Venus & Mercury Retrograde

Rainy and raw

Good morning, and I hope you had a lovely weekend. Our weather was just all over the place. Warm Saturday midday and snow Saturday night.

If you missed it yesterday, the Community Tarot Reading for the Week is up here.

Friday wound up being a productive, albeit plodding day. I polished the bid package and sent it off. I did a bunch of admin work. I did a lot of errands (by car). Everyone was chatty, so it took longer than expected, but I’ve learned not to run errands when I’m in a rush; I can take the extra 10 minutes here and there and listen to people, rather than feel stressed because I need to be at the next thing. Building in that extra time means I can enjoy the errand process.

Everyone  with whom I interacted at the library is back to masking, using gloves, and wiping down the books. I mean, I’ve kept masking all the way through, so it’s no different for me, but some of the staff had stopped masking all the time. But Friday? Everyone was back to masking. I’m glad to see they’re taking what’s happening on the federal level to dismiss health care and contagious illnesses seriously.

Then it was off to the grocery store. The employee I helped get set up on Kanopy and Libby is thrilled. Got the groceries, stopped at another store to get dry erase markers, and they were sold out, so I’ll have to source them elsewhere. The whiteboard we use so my mom can keep track of the day, post-stroke, is very helpful. But those markers don’t last very long, since we use them every day. Stopped at the liquor store. Stopped at the bank to deposit the itty bitty class action check. It might be small, but what it stands for matters.

Hauled everything upstairs, unpacked, did some more admin. We had to check with the doctor’s office on something for my mom, and that was all set. Most of the afternoon was spent on paperwork I had to submit for something. The claim was it would take “about 20 minutes.” It’s taken 6 hours spread over a week, three of them yesterday. And what I need doesn’t fit in their boxes, so I did a side letter and sent it on Monday.

Heard back from the bid package. I’m hired! I had disagreed with a point he made in our interview and mentioned it in the cover letter with the bid package, and the evidence for my perspective on it. He said it took courage to take the risk, and, looking at the quality of my work, I totally backed up my position, and it won even more of his respect. Anyway, I’m hired, although we don’t yet have a start date on the first project. It’s a couple of weeks to a couple of months out. But I am one of the small team of writers with this company (although there will only be one writer per project). So that will be a few projects per year doing something I really love doing.

Oh, that’s right, I haven’t really talked about “it.”  The job is adapting novels into dramatized audiobooks. Which means, instead of a single narrator, or two narrators, it’s a full cast audiobook, but keeping the narrative paragraphs (which would be cut in a typical audio, stage, or filmed production). Choices where sound replaces narration and how to structure it around the dialogue mean each scene has to be technically and artistically re-envisioned, so that it works as audio drama while retaining the author’s narrative voice, which is part of why the reader/listener chose the audiobook in the first place. It’s about working with actors and sound designers/engineers and directors – all something I’m very familiar with and good at. But the adaptation itself is different from a straight up audio, stage, or screenplay. It’s not just reformatting – it’s making nuanced decisions in each scene. Since I work in prose, audio, and script, the job and I are a good fit for each other. The CEO figures they’ll do 6-10 per year at first; how many of those would come to me, I’m not sure, but one every two or three months would be terrific. We’ll see how things shake out.

In the meantime, however, the ghostwriting notes are back – notes from 5 people – and I have to write 20K between now and April 4. But it means I’ll get the full 20K fee for this project, not just the 6K fee I expected. I started working on it yesterday. Depending on the revisions, I hope to get that payment in mid-April.

The ultimate best work schedule for the rest of this year would be to alternate steadily between the ghostwriting and the dramatized audio scripting, with a little bit of script analysis work, reviewing, and other freelance one-offs here and there in the gaps, while working on my own plays and novels.

Ten of Wands energy much?

I doubt it will fall into place that smoothly, and I’m certainly not going to stop sending out LOIs, but I’d rather have both of these clients replace the problematic client since I can’t rely on the problematic client for enough work to pay the bills anymore. We’ll see how the actual numbers and timing work out, but it positions me with more potential stability over the next few months that will also allow me to seek additional work. And I like the work I do for both these new clients, which is always a plus. At least, for the weekend, I decided to stress less.

And both these new clients know I’m booked with the Boiler House Poets in early October!

Anyway, by the time all of that was sorted out, I needed to stop and take a break before cooking dinner, and had a quiet night, rather feeling like a truck rolled over top of me.

Slept through the night. We were supposed to be up and out of the house for an early appointment on Saturday, but that got cancelled on Friday night.

Which freed me up to go to a program I’d hoped to attend at the library, should the morning appointment not have run too long. Now, I didn’t have to worry about it. I could just go and enjoy the program, support a local author AND support the library.

I worked on class prep in the morning, and then trotted up the street to the library on a lovely, sunny morning. I met a printmaker from Eclipse Mill in the elevator, and we started talking, and when we got upstairs more people started talking, and everyone wanted my card, and now I have to print up more cards. But I think several people from this event will come see us at the Boiler House reading.

The author event was for Deborah Benoit, author of The Gardener’s Plot mystery. A North Adams local, she gave a delightful talk, a mix of readings and talking about how she began her novel during Nano, took years to edit, entered it in a contest, and won a traditional publication contract. I really liked what she read. It was cash-only for the few copies of the book she had with her, and I didn’t have enough cash on me, so I will order the book from Bear & Bee Bookstore in the next couple of weeks.

Ryan (who runs programming) and I talked about the BHPC reading. He’s going to start seriously promoting it in June. He and I will get together around that to iron out some more details, and then check in again in September. I might also do my own reading/workshop at some point in the coming months. Ryan knows the library audience and is exceptionally organized, so I know we will get a lot of promotional support.

Turned around 5 small script coverages in the afternoon. Much as I hope a lot of work ends in my queue between now and the end of the month, I also have to cough up 20K for the ghostwriting by April 4. So we’ll see.

Cooked dinner and read for pleasure in the evening.

Did not want to get up on Sunday, but got up and fed the cats. Puttered around doing house and home things. Finished reading the book for review. Worried about the state of just about everything. Read for pleasure. Tried to have a restful day. Did the Community Tarot Reading for the week and scheduled it to post.

It snowed a bit overnight into Monday. Not enough, just enough to keep it gray and dreary and be annoying. It quickly switched over to pretty intense freezing rain, and I was glad not to have to go out in it.

I polished and sent off a workshop proposal to coincide with the art gallery show in August, as I promised at our meeting last week. I started work on another proposal for a conference workshop about an hour and a half east of here that would happen in October.

The library cohort was great. As always, I learned a lot. We have a tertiary training session on Thursday night.

Wrote and polished two book reviews, sent them out, did some solid work on the ghostwriting project, had some questions, and submitted them. Got answers, which will help shape things moving forward. Re-read some of the materials they sent that have an influence on the shape of this piece and I have, shall we say, thoughts and opinions that have nothing to do with actually getting it done.

Found out that today’s literary committee meeting is only online, so I don’t have to drive down to Lenox and back. Saves me about an hour in each direction, which is nice.

Had to deal with some unpleasant admin in the late afternoon, and mail it first thing this morning. Which meant putting on Real People pants and trotting to and from the post office before 8 AM.

So 50,000 people have been slaughtered so far in Gaza in order for That Thing and his buddies to build a resort. That’s like wiping out the entire city of Prescott Valley, AZ or Everett, MA. I’m sure many more than this have died. At least that many or more will die in this country under this regime, not to mention deaths all over the world with aid ending. And it’s not like any of the dollars from that aid are going to be used to build up anything within this country’s boundaries. It’s all going into billionaire pockets. Disgusting. Especially with a drunk texting war plans on his phone.

I never EVER want to hear “but her emails” again. And every person who said that deserves to be punched in the throat.

Cooked dinner, read the next book for review, which I will write up this morning, submit, and then ask for my next assignment.

Slept through the night, which was a nice change of pace. The snow had turned to sleet and then turned to rain over night. We’re supposed to move between rain and snow the rest of the week. I will be perpetually in a storm headache, I fear.

This morning, I will do the review, some commenting on student work, give the slides another polish, and work on the ghostwriting assignment. The latter will be the primary focus of the day. While that happens, I’ll percolate the workshop for the conference; I have until May to submit, although I’d rather get it out the door sooner than later.

Just deleted a whole paragraph of rumination about another conference in November to whom I considered pitching, and realized I don’t want to go there – the dates don’t work, they don’t pay their presenters and expect them to pay all expenses and hotel rates to be at the conference, I don’t like the hotel (which charges for internet use in the room) or the food there, and they have no safety protocols.

The conference in mid-October pays an honorarium, feeds their presenters, and is close enough so I can travel there and back in a day, is smaller, and has safety protocols.

Really not a hard decision as to which one to pitch!

I’d love to go to bed and sleep until the retrogrades are over, but that’s not an option. Okay, I’d love to sleep until we get better people in positions of power, but sleeping won’t get them there so that’s not an option, either.

Off to do the rounds of elected officials, and then buckle down to work.

Have a good one!