sometimes behave so strangely

I was v. productive today, even though none of it was for me. One of my writing friends invited me to read her recently-completed manuscript, and since I'm participating in a group discussion of it tomorrow, I needed to finish reading it today. This ended up taking basically all day, since I had to read much more closely than I usually do. Luckily, I really enjoyed it, even if it did make me a) insanely hungry and b) dream of moving to Europe to write. It was set in Hungary in 2001, and since I love Eastern Europe, and since the protagonist was a writer (actually, a journalist) in her late twenties, I perhaps identified with the character more than I should have. I still need to type up my notes tomorrow, but the reading is done, and I think I can speak to it mostly coherently.

If nothing else, this was good practice -- I've been doing rather a lot of critiquing and editing recently, and it's been making me think about starting up a freelance editing business to supplement my nonexistent writing income until the writing income becomes existent. Ideally, I would just be a glorified proofreader, although I could proofread if it came to that -- but, I do think I have a generally decent understanding of story structure and narrative, and so I could do that type of editing if I felt so inclined. Since so many people are jumping on the self-publishing bandwagon, I think the demand for freelance editors is going to increase, and so this might be a good time to get on the boat. If I'm going to do it, it would be smart to get my website up, figure out my pricing, and start drumming up business in time to really search for business hard when I go to the romance conference at the end of June -- I could edit a lot of things, but I understand romance the best, and it would be a good place to start building my business.

But, who knows -- I also like that I had plenty of time to concentrate on writing the last couple of months. Then again, freelancing means I can load up on projects for the months when I'm blocked, and decline projects during the last month of the manuscript when I'm living and breathing my own edits. Regardless, I don't have time to think of the business plan for this until I write Ellie and Nick's synopsis -- and as soon as I get back from the writing group tomorrow, that's all I'm going to work on until it's done.

However, I did take a break tonight by having dinner (my own leftover boeuf bourguignon at someone else's house, amusingly enough) with John and Jess. I could have taken two breaks, since Chandlord asked if I wanted to see 'Jane Eyre' with her, but the need to finish reading my friend's book was too strong. Still, taking a break was nice, and we had a good time even if Chandlord was missing. Then, I came home, looked at the manuscript some more, caught up on email and twitter (since I hadn't touched my computer all day, which is totally shocking and unlike me), and am now going to go to bed. Goodnight!