So, let’s start with the big picture.
More than a year ago, I blogged about a new routine. A copy of it sits as a post-it note on my desktop, and I have stuck to it not one single time. There is much I like about this routine, but when I came up with it, I seem to have forgotten I had two young children to look after during the day. 9 to 5 just wasn’t (and still isn’t an option).
And beginning a working day at 5 pm isn’t much of an option either.
MONDAY TO FRIDAY, 9 TO 5
9 am to 12 pm: Translate 1,000 words of Radisson
12 pm to 1 pm: Lunch
1 pm to 2 pm: Translate and send pitches of other novels
2 pm to 4 pm: Read through morning’s work and translate 500 words of Radisson
4 pm to 5 pm: If I have time, catch up on some translation reading / read The Chicago Manual of Style for my 9monthswithcmos blog
(Keep other freelancing to a minimum on evenings and weekends)
(Blog on weekends)
As it happens, I’m still working on Radisson (I’m more than halfway through Volume 2), but now I also have to fit in a long sample translation of one of my favourite books of all time, La Fiancée américaine. The (paid) sample translation is for the first chapter, but that alone is 20,000 words long! Both Radisson and the sample translation need to be finished by the end of the month, which works out to around 40,000 words plus freelancing.
I’ve worked out that if I work 7 days a week from now until the end of June, I need to translate 700 words of Radisson every day and 550 words of La Fiancée. Both are very manageable amounts and I’ve been enjoying working like this so far.
The other two big things I have to fit in to my working day are translating tourism articles as a freelancer and working on Québec Reads.
All of which adds up to a routine that looks like this every day:
1. Radisson (700 words)
2. La Fiancée américaine (550 words)
3. Tourism clients (1-2 hrs)
4. Québec Reads (1 hour)
