Monday, November 14, 2005
Husband, Dad, Doctor, Writer
I felt great this morning. I got up nice and early today to make the most of the dark and calm autumn morning, and the free cappuccino from my coffee shop on the way to work, topped it off.
I worked through my outstanding emails and added a few new tasks for this week's marketing plan for FF. I need to upload the new website and I want to have all the press releases prepared early so I can schedule their release.
Made a change to the FF manuscript; removing the word "fuck" from one of the poems. It doesn't necessarily require it, but I included it into a dialogue poem to give it some Scottish reality. We do swear a lot in our every day vernacular, you see.
Thinking about it though, the possible backlash from concerned parents if/when Laura takes her copy of the book into school is not something I would like to have to handle from a PR point of view. So I replaced it with a less offensive word.
The chapter on gays will remain. Surely nobody can take offence at that - it's meant to be funny, but it's definitely not insulting. In fact, any gay men reading it might be quite pleased at the take. I'll need to ask Zander what he thinks.
I complete off the the Janice Galloway and Muriel Spark articles. My research into the latter threw up some extremely interesting stuff so her article is one of those long ones I refuse to break down any further; it's just too fascinating to leave anything out. Not that Janice Galloway isn't interesting, it's just that Muriel did so much and Janice is still a young girl in comparison. Not that Muriel is old - oh, forget it.
I wrote the press releases for all the internet feeds and for all the companies in my press directory. I also wrote out the template for the personal query letters I will distribute to targeted publications such as The Scotsman and The Herald. Over the past year some of the journalists I targeted have slowly started to respond. I've got a couple of contacts in either paper who made it clear they were interested but I should come back when something major happens like a book release. Previous to that they were just ignoring so hopefully they will take the bait this time and do a piece on me. I'm astill determined to get The Leither interested.
Gail was off work today so I moved into my Doctor G role to make her feel comfortable while she recovers. She's really going through it and all she can do is stay in bed and drink lots of water. I made her some dinner but she couldn't even taste it or finish it. I'm just praying I don't catch it so I've been taking vitamin supplements to boost my immune system while it's in the house. A couple of days in bed ill is not something I can afford with two and a half weeks until the book launch.
I spent a lot of time wth Laura going through her Maths still. I've been making up sheets of work for her to do so she can really get to grips with it, which is what she needs.
I also spruced up the FF website. It's looking pretty good. All I need to do is create some extra content on the making of the book and ensure all the links are solid. Then I'll publicise it and on December 2nd I'll release the links to purchase the book. I'm also going to run a competition to win some free signed copies but I'm not sure what the details of that are going to be yet. Still waiting for the advance copy - hope it's not lost in the post!
I worked through my outstanding emails and added a few new tasks for this week's marketing plan for FF. I need to upload the new website and I want to have all the press releases prepared early so I can schedule their release.
Made a change to the FF manuscript; removing the word "fuck" from one of the poems. It doesn't necessarily require it, but I included it into a dialogue poem to give it some Scottish reality. We do swear a lot in our every day vernacular, you see.
Thinking about it though, the possible backlash from concerned parents if/when Laura takes her copy of the book into school is not something I would like to have to handle from a PR point of view. So I replaced it with a less offensive word.
The chapter on gays will remain. Surely nobody can take offence at that - it's meant to be funny, but it's definitely not insulting. In fact, any gay men reading it might be quite pleased at the take. I'll need to ask Zander what he thinks.
I complete off the the Janice Galloway and Muriel Spark articles. My research into the latter threw up some extremely interesting stuff so her article is one of those long ones I refuse to break down any further; it's just too fascinating to leave anything out. Not that Janice Galloway isn't interesting, it's just that Muriel did so much and Janice is still a young girl in comparison. Not that Muriel is old - oh, forget it.
I wrote the press releases for all the internet feeds and for all the companies in my press directory. I also wrote out the template for the personal query letters I will distribute to targeted publications such as The Scotsman and The Herald. Over the past year some of the journalists I targeted have slowly started to respond. I've got a couple of contacts in either paper who made it clear they were interested but I should come back when something major happens like a book release. Previous to that they were just ignoring so hopefully they will take the bait this time and do a piece on me. I'm astill determined to get The Leither interested.
Gail was off work today so I moved into my Doctor G role to make her feel comfortable while she recovers. She's really going through it and all she can do is stay in bed and drink lots of water. I made her some dinner but she couldn't even taste it or finish it. I'm just praying I don't catch it so I've been taking vitamin supplements to boost my immune system while it's in the house. A couple of days in bed ill is not something I can afford with two and a half weeks until the book launch.
I spent a lot of time wth Laura going through her Maths still. I've been making up sheets of work for her to do so she can really get to grips with it, which is what she needs.
I also spruced up the FF website. It's looking pretty good. All I need to do is create some extra content on the making of the book and ensure all the links are solid. Then I'll publicise it and on December 2nd I'll release the links to purchase the book. I'm also going to run a competition to win some free signed copies but I'm not sure what the details of that are going to be yet. Still waiting for the advance copy - hope it's not lost in the post!
Colin 8:55 am