Time is relative(ly annoying) to the observer

Buddha in Daylesford

Did you notice we’re almost out of October?

It snuck up on me, like it always does.

It’s been observed, and duly noted, that my time management skills are poor. Well, really, it’s the task management that’s the problem, because there’s not much to be done about the inexorable march of time. There is goes, duly measured and alloted, whizzing by.

So… tasks. A review might help, I suppose:

  1. MS 1 is currently in the painful throes of its second rewrite/third version, which is 20,000 words shorter than version 1. It’s better, I know it’s better, but it’s not done yet and (whining) it’s hard.
  2. MS 2 is finished, but kind of a dead albatross. Thankfully, it’s in a cardboard box, rather than hanging around my neck. I may be able to rescue it, later, but right now I’m not thinking about it. At all.
  3. MS 3 is finished, but as the sequel to MS 1, it will also need a good, hard edit.
  4. MS 4 is so close to finished it hurts. 5000 more words, tops. And then the first draft will be done and about 8000 words more than I wanted it to be so, hello, more hack, slash, edit and rewrite.
  5. MS 5 is just an idea… and a lot of handwritten notes, and a mostly empty Word document, and a character sitting in the back of my head saying ‘Write about me, write my story, now!’, while all her friends stand behind her waving their arms around like a demented Greek chorus indulging in a spot of interpretative dance, skrieking ‘Me too!’. It’s so helpful.

All in all, though, it’s not bad, as far as time usage goes, when I remember that, two years ago, I had never finished a manuscript.

I’d like to get some stuff finished before the end of the year, because, you know … end of the year, psychological deadline reasons.

But, there are only 66 days left in the year.

Annoying. That doesn’t sound like much.

Luckily, there are 1597 hours, and six minutes, remaining before the end of 2016. Clearly, I just need to prioritise my tasks to make the best use of those hours:

  1. finish the rewrite of MS 1 and resubmit for consideration
  2. finish the first draft of MS 4
  3. slap a handy 30000 words into MS 5 so as to get my creative brain to shut the hell up and stop whinging about having to do edits
  4. the rest of that life stuff

No worries! Let’s get cracking, then…