Wednesday 16th August 2017

I’ve had a day where an unintentional slight that actually worked in my favour really bothered me.
I turned up to training tonight thinking I was going to be teaching to find I wasn’t.  That in itself doesn’t bother me.  I always said I would teach for a 6 month block and I am aware that other people need to teach for their next level of qualification.  I’d been prepared to continue on to help people out in the meantime, despite needing to up my training for upcoming tournaments.  But I didn’t bring all the right gear with me, and despite being able to borrow stuff to enable me to train, it still miffed me and I’m not sure why.  It certainly wasn’t an intentional slight, but despite rationalising this with myself, it bothered me all evening.
Perhaps it was the fact that I’d put time into preparing the lesson plan.  I decided that I now really need to put that time into studying sources for myself.  How useful would it be to read a load of rapier & dagger treatises and discover new insight for myself.
This came to the conclusion on the drive home that I need to read more in general.  It’s been bothering me.  What with the tournament training and the edits, time has been robbed from a few things.  I don’t play as many video games as I once did, restricting myself just to World of Warcraft, and even then I’ve stopped raiding in favour of mount farming and achievement hunting.  And when it comes to TV and movies, I’m so behind.  As much as I love the Marvel stuff I’ve not got round to watching Luke Cage or Iron Fist and Defenders is due this week.  I’m only up to date on Game of Thrones because of a concerted effort.
And I have a pile of books I want to read, but despite wanting to carve an hour out of the day for myself to just read, I find I always get to the end of the day and have run out of time.  I still read a bunch of articles throughout the day and, once in a while, will get a solid hour of novel reading … but I long for a time after the edits are away that I can just block off a weekend, curl up on the sofa and read.
I always tell myself that if I’m ever fortunate enough to write fulltime, part of my daily schedule will be at least an hour reading in the morning before starting work.  Until then, as much as I hate it, it gets sacrificed like everything else.  In the meantime, my ‘To Be Read’ pile grows.   It doesn’t help that I’m such a slow reader.
There was plenty of good stuff about today though.  First, my new targa arrived.  This is pentagonal small shield or buckler.  I’ve wanted one of these for ages and Jay managed to source someone who did them at a 3rd of the price I’ve seen elsewhere.  It’s really nice as the straight edges will aid my sword & buckler fighting by allowing me to bind with it.
I also finished consolidating the 3 chapters into 1 in Black as Knight.  The word count seems reasonable for a chapter so I’m really happy to have got this piece of work done.
I now need to make some small changes to the start of the next chapter to set a few things up.  A secondary character gets a mission and currently is doing that mission without having been given it, so I need to change that.  I’m hoping that won’t take too long to do.
I then hope it’s going to be plain sailing to the end of the novel.  There shouldn’t be any structural things (major or minor) that need doing, other than going through the prose and tightening it up.  I’m interested to see how slowly or quickly that gets done but , as everyone knows, I’m really keen to get this edit complete.
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