How my dayplanner failed to plan my day

This is my entry for today in my dayplanner:

1. SoS
2. Haunted cities
3. Ebook

And these are notes of what I ACTUALLY have to do today:

1. Write and submit REVISED SIGNews article. (The interviewee on one article pulled out so I have to start over. *cries*)

2. Start up first draft of “freebies” ebook.

3. Work on other ebook edits (correct typos, fix formatting, revise as needed, cite sources, etc.)

4. Start Phase 2 of Shadow of Samhain rewrites. (For Phase 1, I wrote new chapters and did some touch-ups in the rest of the manuscript. In Phase 2, I fix typos and grammar mistakes, seek and destroy POV shifts [head-hopping] and read for continuity.)

5. Book reviews. I usually review for 3 sites – my book review blog, The Dabbling Mum and Night Owl Reviews. But I don’t have new books from Night Owl yet (though they were requested, just haven’t arrived yet) and the book for “my blog” is actually one I’m reading for research. I DO have a book to read for The Dabbling Mum, so yay!

6. Touch base w/contact for the haunted cities book. (I just MAY be adding another city to this book.)

I decided to write all that stuff down so I wouldn’t forget it! I know, I could try to fit it all in for the dayplanner entry, but given that it seems that my day is deciding for me what’s going to get done, I don’t see much point in STOPPING what I am doing to write everything down. (I made notes as I went about my business.)

And while I should be writing that SIGNews article right now, I am waiting and waiting and, ah! WAITING! For an email first. Then I can get cracking and start ticking off the other things.

So what else do I have to do today?

Well, yesterday, I was thinking about this ebook I am planning to write. Next year, I am doing “12 ebooks in 12 months” just like my friend and fellow author Jenn Greenleaf is doing this year (though she is doing print AND ebook). Of course, I’m changing it a bit so it won’t be EXACTLY like what she is doing this year, but she is the one who inspired this experiment all the same.

One of the ebooks I am writing is a collection of some of my most memorable accounts of paranormal activity. Of course, I’ll include my experiences from when we lived in a haunted house in St. Louis (you can read more about that in TOTALLY SCARED: The Complete Book on Haunted Houses), but it seems like there has just been so much ghosty stuff going on, I could write a whole book about it! But instead, I’ll do an ebook. And I was thinking, you know, I should write down stuff while it’s still fresh in my mind. In fact, I have journal entries in my own personal PRINT journal (not a blog) of stuff that has happened, and of course I have emailed stories to my co-author, Martha Jette. But I think it’s important to write that stuff down. I was actually thinking about that yesterday when, on the day before, I happened to see a ghost just walk right across the hall....

And with that thought in mind, I was thinking I should start early on the “freebies” ebook I am planning to include in the “12 ebooks” experiment next month. In this ebook, I talk about how I have managed to score FREE stuff every month of the year. This has turned into a mission to find out how people can get free stuff (and I mean free stuff that is NEW and not something that includes fees, etc.) If I waited until December to write this ebook, which is when that “mission” will end, I don’t think I’ll be able to remember everything so clearly. So, I have decided to start up the first draft of this ebook and write it up along with the current ebook I am writing for next year’s release.

(And if anybody knows how to get free stuff or has ideas on how to do that, please share in the comments! Note: I have already signed up with Swagbucks.com to earn points for something free, so please do not suggest Swagbucks.com.)

So it seems I have a busy day going for me today. Interesting just how far it strayed from what I actually had planned for the day!

With that said, time to get back to work!