It's Saturday!

This is a scheduled post, as I'm in Durban now for a short break and will be back Wednesday. And I was sooo good about taking a break I didn't even take the laptop with me. I'm planning to relax and enjoy this time away. I've been working hard the past couple of months and it's take I let my body and mind rest.

Wednesday and Thursday were very busy and I turned around client work like a madwoman.  One of the projects required 24-hour turnaround for each segment of a report over a 3-day period. I outsourced some of the work, but I couldn't sleep well even when the work was being done by another service provider.

Thank God for my lack of sleep, because on Wednesday night she SMSed me to say her two-month old laptop crashed and won't turn back on.  We tried every trick we could think of, but couldn't get the laptop working. She did have another laptop, but she  had to start the work from scratch.  She was a trooper though. Thank you Kehilwe, for being so agreeable even when I woke you up at 5am to ask " are you done yet?"

The incident  taught me a very strong lesson on why editors prefer reliable  writers, rather than those who are talented, but may let life issues prevent them from delivering the product. In the past, I've sometimes thought " surely if life issues interfere, the editor can understand and maybe grant an extension or something?" And maybe the editor could. 

But being in their situation taught me that even if the editor  could be flexible, it's better for their nerves if the writer gets on with the job with as little drama as possible. It was hard to sleep not knowing if Kehilwe , who's new to me, would just decide it's all too hard and she's not doing it anymore (because of crashing laptops and connecticity issues) and left me to fend for myself with our client, who can't proceed with what he's doing the following day unless we give him a report of the previous day.

Anyhoo, despite the problems on Wednesday night, I still had to put in a full day on Thursday because there were clients waiting for articles and deadlines don't care that you couldn't sleep the previous night.

There was a very bright spark on Thursday though - a publisher I sent one of Pam's novels loved the partial... and I mean really, really loved it. They asked for the full manuscript, which I sent through. Now we wait....but just the fact that they loved the story and the characters ( their words) wanted the full manuscript  and responded within a week was a great morale booster. I'm sure Pam will want to give you an update once the novel is accepted... because I'm sure y'all will want to buy it. He he:-)

P.S. More posts are scheduled while I'm away ( Thank you Juy and Pam), so discussions won't stop on Storypot in my absence.  I also want to say a big thank to Lori who's offering to share a a lot of her hardwon wisdom  with Storypot readers. Check out her guest post on Tuesday.