Tired now. I did do some edits on TQB, though, and I think it might be pretty readable. :) And watched Dangerous Beauty, which I still like a lot. I feel like I'm updating a lot today. But now I'm going to go to bed, and... yep. Bed. G'night. :)
I haven't been feeling all that well today (I think I ate too many things that weren't good for me) and so I spent, well, since the last posting, reading Carol Berg's SONG OF THE BEAST, which was really a tremendously good story, and very well written. I'm sort of sliding between reading more, watching some Highlander, or doing a little more writing (or maybe TQB editing) for the rest of the evening. Content, sleepy me.
Got my 1500 words for the day, donno if I'll do any more. I know where I'm picking up with this chapter, and suddenly as I was writing it I had the idea that I had 10 chapters to go. I don't know if that's actually accurate, but I think it's pretty close. So if I manage 1500 words a day I ought to be done by 20 Feb, and since nothing ever works as planned, I *anticipate* being done by 1 Mar.
Which is one year exactly before it's due. This is good. :) I suspect I may end up with a Dangling Plot Thread that will lead directly into book 3, too, which is *also* good!
ytd wordcount: 42,650
I decided yesterday afternoon that I needed to go to the chiro, so I made an appointment and went over and my back went CRRRRRRSHT! CRRRRRRRSHT! And is a lot better now, except I stayed in bed too long this morning so it's sort of stiff. After the chiro Ted and I drove around a bit and went to the comic shop, where I failed to be able to harrass (our favorite comic shop guy) Christopher (apparently he's been holding out on me; evidently he's an artist, and I want to ask him if he's any good), and then we went and wandered around B&N for a while and didn't buy anything. V. sad. Although I did see Catherine Asaro's Luna book. :) Then we went to Best Buy and bought season 5 of Stargate, which prompted us to go home, have dinner, and watch the first DVD. Pretty entertaining. Shaun came home, we talked for a while, then Ted and I went to bed, tud. Where I stayed, as I said, for much too long.
Ted is off making Valentine truffles for the culinary club. I'm making myself grumpy by trying to get gyms around town to tell me how much their monthly fees and initiation fees and stuff are. Actually, the Powerhouse Gym people answered without being pains in my ass. The Alaska Club, as usual, put me through to a voice mail. Well, I don't want to give them my damned phone number. I have my UAA gym membership, but I'd really like to be able to go to the gym at the same time every day so I could get into a regular schedule of it, and the UAA gym isn't *open* at the same time every day. Well, I could go at 4pm MWF and on the weekends. Maybe I should do that. I don't know. Mutter.
Anyway, I'm going to go write now. And eat some breakfast. Ta.
Anyway, before I made an ass of myself emailing Messagefire (I did send them another message saying 'heh, sorry, figured it out') I was going to say, no writing this morning, but we did go over to my parents' house last night and have a lot of enthusiastic political discourse, which was fun. I guess Fridays are mostly my mornings off from writing, which is primarily because Ted doesn't have to get up at 5:30 to go to class, so I feel no guilt about staying in bed. I'll probably write later today, because I'd kind of like to hit 45K tomorrow, just 'cause, well, that'd be cool.
*laugh* Warren Ellis posted a very long comic book script this morning and at the end of it said he'd been working for five days straight and no longer remembered what a girl looked like, so I sent him an email with a photo and said, "Here you go, then, one girl, delivered to your email box."
He writes back with, "I love the 21st century." *laugh*
Okay, that made the morning better. :)
*Glrhrhghgh*. Unreasonable frustration and anger. I use a service called Messagefire to deal with spam on one of my email accounts. It's extremely good and rarely misses spam. Once in a while, however, it misses a piece, and for some reason or other, my Outlook Express doesn't have the nifty popup window Messagefire seems to claim will appear if you look in the headers, or something, so that you can send them a message and say "this is junk mail". (I wasn't able to figure out how to turn the headers on, that was the problem. I did find the header information in the properties.) And I am struggling without success to find a place on the damned site to *report* the fricking problem.
Yeah. Right. While I was typing that, it occurred to me that the properties have a Messagefire URL in them which would very likely give me the reporting page if I just cut and pasted it into a browser. And of course it did. Shit. I'm an idiot. An idiot who already sent a frustrated email to goddamned support at messagefire. Shit.
*Thud*!
Chapter 3 of TQB is done at 6660 words, making for a total of something like 20,300 words for the book so far (ye *gods*!). I need to do some editing and rewriting, which I, I, I, hm, hope I can do this weekend, and then I'll send it off to the proto-editor and charge on. I may charge on anyway, tomorrow. Excellent. Eeeexcellent. Extremely pleased, extremely pleased indeed. I know what I'm doing, know where I'm going, yeah, all is cool. Of course, I'm sure later on I'll hate it, but hey, right now it's fun!
ytd wordcount: 41,150
Oh my gawd. Ted has just arrived home with croissants and raisin bread and rye sourdough bread and sourdough baguettes and something else I missed the name of. I'm considering the possibility that sending him to cooking school was a work of sheer *genius* on my part. *swoon*! Oh my *gawd*.
Oh, for pity's sake. I missed 40K this morning by 250 words.
Oh. Also, I figured out the discrepancy between the 250wpp count vs. Word's exact count. At least, sort of. I've been using the font Courier New because my Courier and Sarah's Courier were different (I don't know *why*) and so when we'd exchange chapters, the fonts would get all screwy, but if I used Courier New that didn't happen. Also, I just discovered that this computer apparently hasn't got Courier. At least, not if I go into Word to try to find it. Buh. Anyway. My laptop /does/ have Courier, and if I use a 12pt Courier instead of a 12pt Courier New, the wpp/Word count is MUCH MUCH CLOSER to the same number.
Now, however, I'm used to Courier New, which is, as you might guess, a slightly larger font and is easier to read on the screen. If this dumb computer had Courier I'd print out a couple sample pages of it and see what it looked like on paper. (Yes, I know, I could go get a copy of it.) Anyway, so now there's faint dithering about whether I should be using Courier to submit manuscripts or if I should just bloody well keep using the font I'm used to, which no one has *complained* about. I suppose I could ask Jenn.
Speaking of whom, she said my contract ought to be in the mail to me tomorrow or Monday, yay!
edit: apparently I can't subtract. I missed 40K by *150* words this morning, not 250.
ytd wordcount: 39,850
Flibbit.
I went to a movie--Mona Lisa Smile--instead of yoga. It was a good movie. Maybe even a little better than I expected. It didn't do much for my general feeling of blahness, but I didn't expect yoga would either, so that's not really much of a loss.
It's a blah day. I redesigned my website in one of those "maybe this will cause me to wake up thin" sorts of things, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to work. It hasn't in the past, anyway, and I don't think I've gotten the web design that's So Cool It Will Make Me Thin with this design, either. It's like the Magic Pen That Will Make My Handwriting Perfect. No matter how many I buy, I still haven't found that pen yet. Not even the incredibly awesome glass pen Sarah bought me is that pen. So I suspect this is not that web design, either.
I've been sort of thinking about starting up LYFA again, but ... eh. I don't know if people would use it, and I don't know if it's sufficient motivation. I need local friends who go to a gym. Although, you know, if I'm going down that path, having *local friends* would be a good start. (No offense, Jai!)
Possibly I should shut up now before I get morose.
Boy, did I have to psych myself into writing this morning. I got up okay and sat down and wrote a little and then was like *blaaaaaaaaah*. blah blah blaaaaaaaaah. Spent some time futzing around, futz futz. Did imaginary wordcount adding and dividing and got up to blow my nose a couple of times. You know, the kind of thing you do when you don't want to be writing, but there's somebody sleeping in the house so you can't run the vacuum cleaner. *futz futz blaaaaaaah* Finally said, "Okay, you're at 625 words, you can stop at 700." 'course, then I was at 725 words and I might as well go on to 800, and then I was at 925 and at that point I might as well finish up the 1100 for the day so I can work on TQB tonight if I want to. So I ended up with like 1220 for the morning, and I actually know the next several lines, so getting started again shouldn't be quite so slodgy. I hope.
I intend to finish ch. 3 of TQB by month's end. The first three chapters are right on schedule to come in at twenty thousand words. Three chapters. 20K. What am I, *nuts*? Next week will be busy, because I'll need to get started on ch. 4 and also edit 1-3 so I can send 'em off to the proto-editor. And also keep writing on TB, of course.
Okay. Working now!
ytd wordcount: 37,550
Got some writing done this afternoon, 1550 words or so on TB. Finished ch. 23. I'm starting to feel the gleeful downward pull, although there's still a lot to go yet. Still, boy is it nice to be looking at the down slope instead of the up slope. Yay!
Went to the gym. Walked 3 miles, did my situps and leg lifts and stuff. *waves a little flag* Came home and had half an apple, because I was ... well. Not really very hungry. What I wanted was a brownie, but what I *really* wanted was to get another taste besides water, water *water* in my mouth.
The apple was emminently unsatisfying, and after waiting several minutes to see if I would become satisfied, I went ahead and had a brownie. But only one, instead of two! :)
Then I considered writing some more, although I really didn't *feel* very much like it. Shaun suggested rolling a d20, and if I rolled a 1 or a 20, I had to sit down and write for an hour. I thought that sounded like a *stellar* idea, and did. And rolled a 15, thank heavens, so I didn't have so sit down and write. :) Instead, I'll do a tablet drawing! :)
*looks vaguely guilty at Ellen* And, um, some Zodiac roughs real soon now. Real soon. o.o
ytd wordcount: 36,350
miles to Rivendell: 375
Okay. Yay! I've run a script that closes the option to add comments to entries over 60 days old. This should throttle the spam problem I'm having, and really, if people for some reason want to comment on older entries, they can either email me or post in the current comments (possibly with a link to the entry being commented on; that'd help).
Now to go *delete* all the spam clogging up my poor site.
Chanti was much better at obedience class last night. This week I need to spend several minutes a day walking her through the house, on her leash, with a peanutbutterspoon in front of her nose, in order to get the 'heel' idea into her little puppy head.
She did *not* like going through the long scary tunnel. In fact, she refused to. Poor puppy! So we'll work on that, too.
I really wanted to work on TQB some yesterday (my unexpected 2700 word chapter was on TB), so after we got home from obedience class I sat down to write a little more. And wrote another 1250 words, for a total of 5230 words yesterday. *Boy* I wish I could do that *every* day!
But I did stay up too late, so didn't get up this morning to write. I'll write later.
ytd wordcount: 34,800
Thud! I sat down to do a little writing, and somehow produced an entire 2700 word chapter in 90 minutes. That's four thousand words for the day! And I dropped the original chapter 13 into the new chapter TWENTY-THREE, which sets up the last bit of stuff that I need set up in this book. *cracks knuckles* It's all downhill from here!
ytd wordcount: 33,550
Oh, that was wonderful. That was beautiful.
Laura Anne Gilman, who is another Luna author (among other things), has a Methos icon on her livejournal. I saw it and posted, "You have a Methos icon. I love you."
She responded: Is it not a thing of beauty? All Hail the Nose!
*SHRIEKS OF LAUGHTER* Yes! Yes! All Hail the Nose! There's someone else out there who *understands*! I ought to ask her what she thinks of Adrian Brody... *laugh*! Oh, that made my morning. *beam*
In other news, I got 1300 words written this morning and 850 on Saturday, which wasn't quite what I'd been aiming for on Saturday, but we also had birthday shopping (HAPPY MOM DAY! although a little late now!) and cake baking and lasagna-making to do, so it was a pretty busy day. We had a really nice evening, too. Mom and Dad came over, and Ted's friends Paul and Robin and Beth, and we ate a lot and enjoyed ourselves. :)
Yesterday, I had plans. I was going to do some writing, then maybe go to a movie, and go to the gym, and do some editing/critiquing for GPA and read Trip's WiP so he could pick my brain.
Instead, I sat down to read the Locus magazine which has MY NAME IN IT AHAHAHAHA ahem and got pinned down by Zilli. I pleaded with my husband to rescue me, by way of giving me a book to read so I didn't have to disturb the cat and yet would have something to do, and started reading SUNSHINE, by Robin McKinley.
You might guess, at this point, that I didn't get any writing done yesterday.
Man. I love Robin McKinley's books in general, but SUNSHINE was one of those, "Why do I even bother trying to write" kinds of reads. It was *incredibly* good. Waugh! Waugh again! Waugh thrice!
I did go to a movie--Calendar Girls--which was very cute indeed, and I did go to the gym, and walked 4 miles. Yay!
ytd wordcount: 30,850
miles to Rivendell: 372
*OH!* *I* remember what it was that I was going to post about earlier!
They're opening a Hot Licks next to Title Wave! Mary Anne! Laura! I summon you unto Anchorage, for the demolition of a Prudhoe! So mote it be!
Silkie is an excellent research assistant. *laugh* Thanks, Silkie. :)
Dithering about whether or not I want to take a 6 week life drawing class over at Blaine's, the local art shop. It might be fun! Or I might lame on it and stop going after a couple weeks. Dither dither. What do my gentle readers think? :)
I was going to say something else, but I've forgotten what. In fact, the bit about the drawing class was going to be secondary to the other thing. Hrm. Oh well!
Apparently I shoulda gotten up to write this morning, as I just noticed I'm 1300 words away from 30K. But, well, I didn't, and now I have a headache. *futzes around* Guess I'll post this. Not much to report this morning. :)
Ok, so I went to the gym anyway. And the weight room was closed! But I had 100 minutes or so before Ted was due to come pick me up! So I walked! And then Dad arrived! So we walked! And we discovered (well, it was a discovery to ME; Dad knew about them) MORE HALLS for walking! So now my circuit is 1.25 miles instead of .8 miles! So I walked 4.5 miles! My feet hurt!
And I wrote 450 words on TQB. Go me!
ytd wordcount: 28,700
miles to Rivendell: 368
~o Every single night, the same arrangement
I go out and fight the fight o~
I'm supposed to go to the gym tonight. The prospect fills me with doom and gloom. Not for any sensible reason, because I know I'll feel better after going, but *whiiiiiiiine*. I don't *waaaaant* to. And it's really tiresome to go through this same mental process every time I think about going to the gym. I donno how to reboot it, though. It's not quite as bad when I get into the habit, which I'm out of right now, even though I was doing well in early December.
Anyway. Just splah. It's no fun. Blbllt.
music: Once More, With Feeling, BtVS
Duh. I remembered at about 12:30 that Ted had said he had a meeting today, although he hadn't said what time it was. I stopped waiting for him to come home so I could have lunch with him, and just nuked some potato chowder. Which is still *extremely* good. And I had a couple cookies for dessert. So *there*.
I want to eat a lot, today. It's not that I'm particularly hungry. I'm bored. I had an apple. It wasn't inspiring. I've drunk water. Also lacking in the inspiration department. I had breakfast at 8, and that was fine, but now what I really want is, like... fudge. A lot of fudge.
The good news is I haven't got any, so I can't eat any, but man. :P I haven't started eating cookies, because they're not really what I want, but ... :P Just :P
TB is really starting to come together. Which is good, y'know, what with being 60,000 words into it. But it really is. This morning I was able to work in a bit that's INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT to the story, and I'd been worried about pulling it off for, well, the entire book so far, but Sarah's idea from last week or whenever it was has given me sufficient clarity that although this INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT bit isn't directly related to her idea, apparently her idea has given me sufficient confidence with *that* aspect of the story to be able to pull *this* aspect off.
What a long sentence that was.
Anyway, so the words didn't flow as easily today as they did yesterday, but I've gotten through this REALLY IMPORTANT BIT, so I'm extremely pleased. 1136 words for the morning. Perhaps I'll try for another 400 this afternoon, or, y'know, maybe I won't worry about it. :)
Let's see. Thinks to do today:
1. gym
2. work with Chanti
3. call CellularOne
4. call those other people, too
ytd wordcount: 28,250
Accomplished me! I got my whole to-do list done today, *plus* I got some more writing done this evening. Another 1350ish on TQB, making for 3224 words written today, wow, go me! I don't know if it's any *good*, but by George, I'm enjoying writing it. :) Actually... actually I think it's coming along all right. I'm just about 20K into it (!) and things are getting set up. I've got characters appearing left and right who are going to be important, and I think by the end of this chapter I might have Belinda (my main character) in the right place to move into the meat of the story. Which is good, because if I'm pulling off 25K every 3 chapters, then .. yeah. Yeah, I think I've got my pacing just about right for a 150K book. We'll see!
In other news, I went to Yoga For Weenies, and it was a good class. It's not an exercise class, it's a stretching class, and probably that's really what I need right now. I shall go back. It felt good. Not in the same way as exercise, but it was good anyway.
Mailed the letter to the wretched IRS. Worked with Chanti a *little* bit. It's been a pretty decent day. Oh, and the potato and ham chowder turned out really well! Yay!
ytd wordcount: 27,100
Desk is clean enough for water jug now. That's good. *And*, get this, I found my missing Bon Jovi Destination Anywhere cd!
I think I shall go get new passport pictures taken for my Irish passport stuff. Maybe I'll do that today.
music: Destination Anywhere, Bon Jovi :)
Had I not told Peg Kerr that I was going to walk last night, I probably would have flaked on going to the gym. However, having told a relative stranger I was going to do this, I somehow felt more obligated to. Perhaps I should make a habit of going around to random people's blogs and announcing that I'll be walking tonight.
Anyway, so I did manage to gym, and I walked 3.5 miles, and my feet are a bit tender, but I did it! Also did some floor work and some upper body weight lifting, which was enough to make me stretchy-stiff this morning but not yet crippled from pain. That's good. :)
Then Ted and I went out to TGIF's and had birthday brownies, since I'm not making his birthday cake until this weekend. So, y'know, I negated the whole having gone to the gym thing, but perhaps I at least held my ground instead of losing any. And the brownies were *very* good. *Completely* unnecessary after the 40oz of water I drank at the gym, but birthdays aren't about necessity!
Writing this morning went a lot better than yesterday. 1885 words, and at 10 after eight this morning I noticed it was, well, ten after eight, and went 'crap! late for work!' *pause* 'oh well, only a little left to write on this chapter.' Finished the chapter and got to work at about 8:20, which wasn't bad. And ooh! I either, er, broke 60K this morning, or I didn't! *o.o* I can't remember if I'm at 239 or 249 pages. *laugh*
thinks to do:
1. clean desk enough to arrange water jug & mug conveniently
2. go to Yoga For Weenies class
3. make dinner
4. work with Chanti
5. *mail* the letter to the IRS
ytd wordcount: 25,750
miles to Rivendell: 363.5
Whshsht. Have managed to do more than half of my thinks to do list. I must go get photocopies of tax stuff made tonight.
thinks to do:
1. write irs letter
2. work with chanti
3. wrap tedpresents
4. go to gym
5. cook dinner
6. write more
7. call dentist
HAPPY TED DAY!!!!
Ted had to get up at 5:30 in the morning on his day so he could go be at class by 7am. Poor Ted! OTOH, he got a new computer for his birthday, so it can't be *all* bad. :) Plus I have some other presents to wrap for him. :)
Last night's obedience training class didn't go so well. Chanti was *completely* uninterested in it. One of my Thinks To Do today is to spend 20 minutes working with her on class stuff. o.o Next week we'll make sure she's hungry when we go, so she's interested in the treats, too. o.o
Got another 250 words written on TB last night, since I decided what I needed to do was edit the chapters I'd worked back in so that this morning I'd be able to forge on. And I did. So that was good. What was somewhat less good is that I discovered that my original chapter 16 which was now chapter 20 did the same basic thing that my new chapter 17 does, only not so well. Which is good because it means I'm using the same train of thought and have the same general impulses with this book as I did in the first place, but which is bad because instead of being at 60K I'm at something like 57K and working on a new chapter 20, which is like unto pulling teeth. I managed to get my 1100 words this morning, but man. I'll give it another whirl later today, maybe -- I'd like to hit 1500 for TB, and I just noticed that my YTD wordcount is a trifle shy of 25K, so that's kind of inspiring to sit my butt down and do either another thousand on TB or do something with TQB.
thinks to do:
1. write irs letter
2. work with chanti
3. wrap tedpresents
4. go to gym
5. cook dinner
6. write more
7. call dentist
ytd wordcount: 23,850
Oh, on the word quota thing. This is my decision: I'm going to leave my quota at 1100 words a day. If I achieve that, good; that's what I need to do to make my year goal. That's all I *need* to do.
So that's my quota. My *goal* will continue to be 1500 words on the primary project and 1000 on the secondary. I suspect ultimately it'll even out, because I do tend to take weekends from writing, even if it's not during an actual weekend. But that, I think, is basically how I'll approach it. And I'm going to take a leaf from Trip's page and not add missed days' quota onto the total. (Of course, as long as I stay ahead of myself, that won't be a problem, right?) So, y'know, stay tuned and we'll see what happens. :)
In other news, I called the dance studio again because they hadn't called me back, and learned there's a Tap 1 class on Friday nights, and a Tap 3 class on Satuday afternoons. I certainly have enough tap to take T3, but because I'm out of shape and *especially* because my back is all screwed up still, I think I'm going to take the T1 class for a month or two to get back into it, and then move into the T3 class. So mote it be.
Also, inspired by Starling, I'm eyeing a Yoga For Weenies class on early Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Ok, they actually call it 'gentle yoga', but I figure Yoga For Weenies is about right, too, since it says 'this is for people who are out of shape or injured', and since I'm both, that sounds like it's about the right speed. Anybody around here want to take a Yoga For Weenies class with me?
A cat exploded kind of writing morning. I got 2300 words written this morning and then worked 2.5 chapters back in to the book, although they are not yet edited. Still, it puts me at 60K! Only 40 to go! Hooray! Well, ok, we'll see how close to 60K I am when I've gotten the necessary edits done, but it'll be closer to 60 than 50, at least!
Perhaps this afternoon I'll try to get a thousand written on TQB, too. I know where I'm going with that, I just haven't sat down to work on it in a few days. Am *very* pleased with this morning's work on TB, though, because, er, well, because! And ooh, there's at least one sniffly bit in it. Sniiiif! :)
Writing is *so* much more fun than work. :)
ytd wordcount: 22,500
Man, it's beautiful out. Ten below, but beautiful.
Sat down to write this morning (finally), and thought, "Hm, maybe this is the place to start working in some of the already-written stuff," and so I opened up the original ch. 15, which is where I thought the stuff I needed was. Nope. Okay, so I opened up the original 16. Nope. Hm. Opened up the original 14, although gosh, I thought I only had stuff from 15 and 16 to amalgamate.
Hm. Not there either.
*13*. I had to go back to ch. *13* of the rough draft to find the stuff that I was looking for. Which means if I can use half of what I wrote before (and I think I can), I'm at least another 5K into the book, and if I can use most of it, more like 8 or 9K. Wow. I'd lost track of how much I had to work back in, I guess.
Plus I actually *wrote* 1200 words, and didn't use the stuff from the original 13 yet after all. I suspect I'll finish this chapter (I'm currently working on 17) before I get to the place in the story to use what used to be in 13. Which is really, really good: it makes the pacing much better.
Oh, and I finally finished putting my book nook together, after a mere 15 months of living here and using it. :)
ytd wordcount: 20,200
Last night while Mom and Dad were over for dinner, Ted flopped on the futon and Chanti slllloooooowly worked her way up onto it, even though she knew she wasn't *supposed* to. :)
Okay, that's better. Got my hundred and ninety eight pages printed out, read (edited some), and got my timeline straight. I now know I'm on day four and I believe I have three days left. I hope Jo gets a chance to sleep: writing about her when she's this tired makes me yawn a lot. :)
Furthermore, re-reading has allowed me to remember some things I need to pick up in the next several chapters, so that's also good. And boy. I've done huge amounts of re/new-writing, and as I was finishing up what I'd read, I realized I still haven't gotten to this Very Important Bit that's already written but hasn't been worked back in yet. It was originally in ch. 15, and it *looks* like it might go into the new 17. Which is good, because originally it felt like it was coming too early in the story, and now that's getting all straightened out. I said to Ted, "I feel a lot more like I'm writing a story now than I did last time I read this (a month ago)." He said, "Good. That's exactly what you said with URBAN SHAMAN." I have more or less no recollection of this, but he says writing this book is going exactly writing US did. That's good, 'cause it means the rest of it should go pretty easily, since once I got all the screw-ups in US fixed, it was pretty easy to write. :) Whatever would I do without Ted to remind me of these things!
Mmm. I just made a fresh loaf of bread, and Ted's browning a pork roast that he's going to turn into pulled barbeque pork sandwiches this evening. Mom's making baked beans and they're coming over for dinner. Mmm. Yuuuuummmmmy. The house smells good. :)
Okay. Off to run errands, and then I gotta come home and get my 1100 words written. Should be able to pull it off now. Yay! :)
music: Evanescence: Fallen
Sheesh. Take a couple days off from writing and look what happens. You lose total control over how many days have passed in your book.
Actually, I was on the verge of doing that anyway--I've rewritten so much that I no longer know exactly when things are happening in relation to one another--and so I sat down, wrote about twelve words, then went 'shit, is it time for this yet, or should that be tomorrow?' So I thought I'd better read it. And, well, reading is easier done on paper than on screen, so I thought I'd better print it out. And it's 200 pages long at this point (198, dammit, 2 stupid pages short of 50K!) and I use SO MUCH PAPER printing stuff out that I wanted to try printing it out double-sided, which my printer isn't equipped for, so I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to print every other page (actually, that's easy, there's a print option to let you do that) and more importantly how to feed the pages back into the printer so that the pages would be right side up. Got that figured out. Go me.
Then realized that if I just reversed the pages, I'd have page 2 printed on the back of 197, which was *really* not the point. So I had to go through and reverse the order of my odd-numbered pages so that page 1 was on the top of the stack. *Then* I printed it out, and discovered that this meant that the whole thing had to be hand-reversed again so that the front of my printout didn't start with page 197. SIGH.
However, it's all printed out now, and I'm going to go sit down, have some breakfast, and take some notes on when things are going on. :)
It's 14 below. That really seems unnecessary.
So we got another notification from the IRS a week or two ago, which said, in essence, "Oops, yeah, we screwed up, and we've looked at your numbers again and now we think you owe five hundred dollars instead of 900." Garrghgh.
So Mom and I (mostly Mom) went over the numbers forty-eight times, and concluded that the IRS screwed up *again*. Small failure on our part; we hadn't written the taxes withheld on Ted's prematurely withdrawn 401K on the right line, although it was included in our taxable income and in fact the amount of taxes we thought we should pay and the amount the IRS thought we should pay was the same amount, and yet they concluded somehow that we hadn't paid taxes on that income. Sigh. Anyway, so I get to write them another letter. Whee! o.o Still, we don't owe any taxes, except for on $28 interest from a savings account which we had, in fact, forgotten to add in to the amount. I'll send them a check for $5 and say that I believe that should cover the taxes and penalties on the $28. Man. :P
Seepy me. Maybe I'll wake up a bit now that I've had some fud.
I decided to take yesterday off from writing. *gasp* And I didn't get up early this morning to write, either, but I'll write during lunch. That's the plan, anyhoo. Oh, and I need to call the chiro because I think I could do with one more tune-up.
Ted is having a sneezing frenzy, and it's -4 outside. Those two things aren't related, but neither of them are particularly pleasant. Although the sneezing frenzy is a lot less pleasant for Ted than me.
Ok, back to the grindstone.
*groan* Didn't get in to work until late this morning, and not because I was busy producing a prodigous wordcount. No, I was just too damned tired to get up until 8:15. I staggered out of bed at 6:15 and went 'no, screw this', and stumbled back in for another two hours. I guess I needed it. I'll do my 1100 on TB today, but I might take the day off from TQB. We'll see.
Need food now, and water. Especially water. And, um. Oh, and last night I went over to the U and paid for this semester at the gym, so I can start going back. Yay. :)
Hah! I made my 1300 on TQB, which puts me at 3K for the day (go me!) and 19K for the year! Go me twice! I'll hit 20K tomorrow, which will make me v. happy. It's not quite a NNWM schedule, but then again, I didn't write for several days while my back was going *grlglkght*, and also I'm not /trying/ for a NNWM schedule. Why ar eyou looking at me like that? o.o
Apparently I intimidated the hell out of a friend who shall remain nameless (in case she wants to remain nameless) this evening, because she took a look at my site and ALL THE WRITING STUFF that's on it recently, and she's nearly finished with a novel of her own, and had one of those AAAAAAAAAAAAH I'M NEVER GOING TO DO THAT AAAAAAAAAAAH moments which tend to haunt writers. So she told me to tell her to stop panicking and finish the damned book, which I did. :) And now all is well. *laugh* I have good friends, I really do. I'm a lucky me.
And, mmm, Ted's making roast chicken for dinner. Soooo yummy!
ytd wordcount: 19,000
This tablet thing is hard! It would be easier if I could turn the tablet like I can turn a drawing pad, but noooOOOOOoooo. Anyway, a drawing of Breic. :)
The books I'm working on, or at least referring to in my blog these days, by initials:
TB is THUNDERBIRD FALLS, the sequel to URBAN SHAMAN. (Let us not focus on the fact that in fact the initials of this should be 'TF'; apparently 'thunderbird' is the important word in my mind.) This series as a whole is The Walker Papers, which probably won't ever be referred to as TWP, but they /could/ be. Theoretically.
TQB is THE QUEEN'S BASTARD. Epic fantasy. Being written on spec for a proto-editor at Tor.
MD is MANIFEST DESTINY. Epic sf. Been working on this for years. Might finish it this spring.
HoS is HEART OF STONE. Urban fantasy. It's actually finished and off to the agent.
HoC is HOUSE OF CARDS, the sequel to HoS. I haven't started it yet, but I expect to sometime this spring, so I may be mentioning it from time to time. The third book in that series is HANDS OF FLAME (HoF), which I'm unlikely to mention again for months. :)
Angles is RIGHT ANGLES TO FAERYLAND, a young adult fantasy. Also off to the agent, and also at Tor. Its sequel, GIANTS IN THE SKY (Giants), is something I may or may not get to this year. If I do, it'll be this fall.
The third Walker Papers book is tentatively titled COYOTE DREAMS (CD), and I won't be mentioning that again until this fall, either.
I'll stick this entry under a works in progress link over under the 'projects' side bar, so people can reference it if they need or want to. :)
Okay, what Sarah gave me yesterday as an idea was *exactly, *exactly* what I needed. It's something the reader can figure out, it's something that Jo has an IC reason for happening that doesn't necessarily associate with the *real* reason it's happening, it can be used in flashes and gradually get worse, it's *perfect*. It's *exactly* what I needed. It's *exactly* the kind of thing I've been trying to figure out for the whole book. It's *perfect*. And now I'm burning through the wordcount, because I'm no longer hitched up on this one aspect that I really, really needed in order to make the book work. It's absolutely perfect. ALL HAIL SARAH!
So 1700 words this morning, and I know where I'm going and I am just totally psyched. TOTALLY, DUDE.
I'm also starving. My god. SOOOOO HUNGRY. Food. Food NOW.
ytd wordcount: 17,700
Didn't go to the SinC meeting, but I did write a lot more. Another 1770 words or so, for a total of 3400 today, and I finished the 2nd chapter of TQB, which came in at 6400 words. 29 pages. I've written 2 chapters and it's already 63 pages long! Ye gods. Best of all, though, I know what I'm doing with chapter 3!
Ok, that was a *lot* of writing today. I think it'd bedtime now.
ytd wordcount: 16,000
Hah! V. Good! Sarah's idea got me through the stuck part in spades and will make for some really cool stuff later in the book. 1642 words on TB today! Yay!
ytd wordcount: 14,250
Tired. Only got 700 words written this morning, 'cause I got kind of stuck, but I talked to Sarah about the stuckness and she had a REALLY GOOD IDEA which will get me through it, so I'll try to sit down and write my other 400 words at lunch. Yay!
I have the coolest job in the world. :) Not the day job, that just pays the bills, but the writing job. I mean, wow. I get to sit down and write stories, if not for a living yet, at least for a paycheck. I get to find out what happens before anybody else does. I get to write things down and get glimmers of what's going to happen in the stories, stuff I didn't expect, and I get to wriggle with glee when I know that the unexpected things are going to cause trouble for my characters. That's just so cool! :)
My editor, Matrice, on the amount of romance that they're looking for in the Luna books:
The romantic levels in the LUNA titles do vary a lot--and that's just how we want them. In some cases it's stronger and in some cases less so. For an ongoing series, in particular, there can be more of a "potential"--for a stand-alone title, there should be a stronger connection.
This makes me feel a lot better. I don't know why, exactly, but I've been very nervous about the lack of romance in URBAN SHAMAN. Not because I think it should be there, because it would in fact be totally inappropriate to the story, but perhaps because there's been a great deal of discussion about the amount of romance in other books, and I keep having the uncomfortable feeling that someone's going to say, "This is great, except I'd like you to get Jo and Character X to confess their feelings for one another by the end of chapter 19," and the thought makes my head implode.
Now, on any logical level, this is ridiculous, because Matrice wouldn't have bought the book if she were worried about the lack of romance in it. (There is at best a glimmer of potential romance. This is not a book with a romantic subplot worth mentioning.) Logic, however, seems to be in sparse keeping on this topic, because I've genuinely been fretting about it for weeks. During a chat last week Matrice said that it was the tone of the books that was most important, and that settled me some, but her above quote finally makes me feel all better about it.
Silly writer. :)
I had great aspirations of getting 1400 words written on TQB this evening, which would 1. put me at 5k for the chapter and 2. put me at 13k for the year, overall. I didn't make it 'cause it turned out the chicken was still frozen and so we went out to eat, but I /did/ get the 1000 words that's my so-called quota done on it.
It occurs to me at this moment that perhaps I should be aiming for 1500 words a day on TB, as the primary project, instead of just 1100, since the difference between 1100 on the primary project and 1000 on the secondary is negligible.
I shall consider this possibility. Next week. This week I think it'll be sufficient to actually continue to write every day. Next week we'll heighten our ambitions. Maybe. :)
I'm also considering rolling TQB over into the primary project slot when I finish TB, and putting HoC into the secondary slot. At 1100/1000 words a day, that doesn't really make any difference, but at 1500/1000 wpd, it does. Then when I finish TQB, roll HoC into the primary and MD into the secondary. That might keep things fresher. We shall see, we shall see!
Is this as mind-numblingly boring for other people to read as I imagine it is? :)
ytd wordcount: 12,600
WOO!!!! Jennifer Jackson requested a partial manuscript from Sarah! YAAAAY SARAH! YAAAAAAAAAY! *dancie dancie dance*!
I have fetched a pitcher, filled it with water, and gotten myself a coffee mug. Now to use these three things in conjunction.
My damned shoulder hurts this morning. All the way down through my pinky. :P Maybe the water will help some, since the aspirin doesn't seem to have.
Thinks to do today: call dance studios, don't eat too much.
Smug me. Blew through 1150 words in 45 minutes this morning. Finished the rewrite of ch. 15. I think I've completely rewritten, let's see. At least 4 chapters now. 14-15 are entirely new, so is 9, more than half of 13 is new, chunks of 12 are new. I was thinking that ch. 16 might be partly old and partly new, but now I'm thinking again. I might not get to re-amalgamating the original 15 and 16 until maybe as late as 18 or 19.
Ch. 16 is unlikely to be 15 pages long, so I probably won't break 50K until ch. 17. Still, the milestone is visible from here!
Writing a book, for the record, goes a lot more smoothly if you work on it every day instead of farting around and stretching the damned thing out over months and months and months. At least, for me it does, MANIFEST DESTINY aside. I realize I started that in like 1997 or 8, but my reach doth exceed my grasp, or didth exceed my grasp, at least. I wanna get back to that book and give it another go, now that I've got another, um. *counts on fingers* 5? 6? books under my belt. (5. and a half.)
I notice once more that when I'm writing, my posts tend to be all *about* writing. :)
ytd wordcount: 11,600
Ok, so one of the reasons I wanted to buy a drawing tablet is because I want to work more on my 1000 drawings project, and I spend enough time at the computer that the two things seemed like they should perhaps go hand in hand. I might get more than one drawing done a week this way. Of course, because it's an entirely new medium, I'm not exactly going to be producing works of genius, and if I manage to learn to do more than line drawings this year, I think I'll consider it a coup. o.O None-the-less, here you go, my first tablet drawing.
Oh, oh, and I sent of HEART OF STONE to Jennifer. That's all the news that's news today. :)
Wow, go me. I got another 1250 or 80 or something words on TQB done this evening, for a total of about 2900 today, which isn't significantly more than yesterday but which for some reason makes me go "cool!" a lot. :) Closing in on 4K on this chapter. I remembered tonight that I'm theoretically writing this book on spec, and that sort of technically speaking I don't really have to keep working on it after I'm done with the first 3 chapters, until I hear back from the proto-editor.
*snort*
ytd wordcount: 10,450
Zibblt. Pfht. Headache. Writing-induced, evidently. I was concentrating pretty hard on what I was doing. 1610 words written on TB, and if I manage my 1K on TQB this afternoon I'll break 10K for the year. *waves a little flag* *yawn* But TB is starting to feel more like I'm putting a story together, which is good, and I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that it's okay if it's a story that happens on different levels from the first book in the series. I'm feeling like I'm doing it right, at least, which is much more than I felt a month ago. :)
Also, my back is still slowly improving. Whew. I'm still not going to sit in the computer chair for long if I can avoid it, but it *is* improving.
So. Goals for today: read Sarah's rewrites on the Iya book. Write 1000 words on TQB. (I'm considering renaming it to THE RED QUEEN'S BASTARD.) Install my new drawing tablet & software if I get those two things done. Maybe go to the gym and be VERY CAREFUL with myself. :)
Smug!
Got another 1100 words written on TQB, making a total for the day of about 2800 words, which is just about exactly the kind of output I'd like to have every day. Ok, it's probably not likely to happen every day, but man, I'd like it to. My goal, for the moment, is to do my daily quota of 1100 words, and that's supposed to be on my main project, which is at the moment TB. Then if I can get another 1000 words written on TQB, I'll really be extremely pleased with my progress all around. If I do that consistently, TB should be done in mid-February, and TQB in, er, June. Ok, that's a long time away, but it also isn't, since we're talking about a 150K word book with that, and it's a secondary project.
The plan, at the moment, is to write HOUSE OF CARDS when I'm done with TB. I just finished printing HEART OF STONE out for Jennifer, and boy, I really like it. *laugh* Someone should buy it! Then when *that's* done, I want to go back to MANIFEST DESTINY and see if I'm up to writing it yet. I've gotten better as a writer; I might be able to handle the cast of thousands now. Then it'll be time to do the third Walker Papers book, because I want to stay a year ahead on those. And if I can manage another secondary project book after TQB is done, that would be great, too, but I'm not going to push it during the summer months -- as long as I get my 1100 words in a day, I'll be satisfied from, oh, May-September. Hey, summers are short up here!
Extremely pleased Kit today. And oh! I went and got a drawing tablet for the computer. I was going to install it, but, er. *laugh* I discovered I had to finish printing out HoS. Maybe I'll wait til tomorrow to install it, and use it like I did today -- as a reward for having done my writing. :) And I went and got my bangs dyed bright red, which is more interesting than what they were before. Maybe I'll take a picture tomorrow. :)
Ok, printing out synopses now. Woot!
Thud!
1700 words written on TB today. I've finished rewriting chapter 14, which is partly old material and partly new, and know where I'm going in ch. 15, which is going to be *entirely* new. 16 might be entirely new, too, which means the current 15 and 16 will probably end up partly in 17 and 18 and partly be tossed out on their ears. I should be at 50K when I'm done with the ch. 16 rewrites, and that ought to be pretty close to halfway through the book. I'm pleased, very pleased, by this.
Ambition for later this afternoon: get 1K written on TQB. My goal there is to finish ch. 2 by the end of next week. It's a much slower book to write than TB, or in fact anything else I've written so far, but then, I've never tried writing chapters this long before, either. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see if it works. :)
Oh, other ambition for this afternoon, which I can get on if I clean my desk up, is printing out HEART OF STONE for Jenn, as I finished editing it last night. Yay!
Also getting my hair trimmed this afternoon and planning to go over and buy a mouse tablet because I've coveted one for ages and I have some money saved up so I can buy one. Not a big fancy one, but at least I'll be able to try this drawing on the computer thing. :)
My back's feeling better, although it's not at all perfect yet. I've realized that the computer chair is the worst chair in the house for me to sit in, so I'm planning on spending as little time in it as possible. :)
Ok, lunch has been eaten, webpage has been updated, words have been written; now I'll get started printing HoS. Yay!
Got crunched again. Doing better now; the baseball-sized lump of ow in my back seems to have reduced to more of a golfball-sized lump, and I can move more easily now. I've got another appointment on Tuesday, just to be sure things are getting better, but I /feel/ better than I have this year. o.O
Several times this morning and last night I thought of something I wanted to post about. However, whatever it was can't be brought to mind, so I'm not going to post about it. Take *that*.
Let's see. Sunday, Ted and I drove down to Longview to visit his aunt and grandmother and parents, who happened to be there as well, so that was a very nice day. They had a rocking chair which did wonders for my back. I want one!
Monday was mostly pretty low-key. Oh, we went to Pike's Place Market, where it was very cold indeed, and Breic spent quite a lot of time feeding himself quite a lot of rice at the Chinese restaurant we went to. That was entertaining. :) Got lost coming home, but got straightened out again, and that evening we went over to Grandma's, where Breic was extremely charming. Tuesday we took Grandma out to lunch, then went to visit Aunt Mabel, and eventually made our Very Slow Cautious Way to the airport. At 5pm on a workday, there were never more than a countable number of cars on any one stretch of the freeway. The roads were a bit scary. We got out a couple of hours late, but we made it home that night, which is more than Ted's parents did -- his Mom called from Portland yesterday to say they were still there (they were supposed to leave on Tuesday night just like we were!). Deirdre and Gavin didn't get out of Seattle until something like 5 hours late, themselves, and apparently, just to top off the whole weekend, upon arriving in the San Francisco airport, Breic had a poop explosion the likes of which had never been seen before.
Despite all that, I, at least, really had a wonderful time!
*giggle* I went out to do errands tonight wearing the hat Angie made for me. At the comic shop, Christopher said, "Now *that* hat is hardcore!", and a total (male) stranger at Barnes & Noble said, "I *love* your hat!" Hee hee hee!
*sigh* Went to the chiro but am still damaged. Somewhat better than before, but I feel like I've got a baseball in my back. A big owie lump of thickness. :P I was hoping for a miraculous recovery, but not this time. I get to go back again tomorrow.
:P again.
So no gym for me tonight. I hope I can start gymming by Sunday, but I guess we'll see. *sigh* Stupid back.
Let's see. Taken from an LJ meme: Jobs I've had, as delineated by the summers I did the jobs until I started working year-round instead of just summers. :)
public library volunteer, age 9 & 10
babysitter, age 12 & 13
cannery worker, ages 14-17
grocery store bagger, age 15
fast food worker, age 18
deli worker
archives assistant*
interlibrary loan assistant
data entry drone
secretary/phone information/internet signup
tech support
web designer
technical writer
web designer
author*
*an awesome job. I'd love to do it again.
Wow, that's quite a lot more than I expected!
So -- did I say this? Friday, Ted and I successfully had lunch with Anna and Dara, which was not only lots of fun but also very cool, simply because I hadn't seen them since, er, 1997. Ye gods. We talked for an hour, before Anna had to go back to work, and then trundled on home where we got to pack everything up and go to the new not-ground-floor-really condo.
By that time, my back was in full-on spasm mode, which, y'know, sucked. I think we did the family Christmas stuff Friday night, which was fun. I got *laugh* I got a cool piggy bank, actually shaped like a pig, which Deirdre said was to keep my new-found writing riches in. *laugh* And they got Ted a mortar and pestel and some good spices -- from that company you brought us the cinnamon from, Laura! -- although they're already ground so Ted can't use the mortal and pestel for them. :) And Mom got a goooooorgeous new shawl and Dad got, hm, I've forgotten. :)
Saturday morning we went and found a back brace and bought white elephant gifts for the gift exchange before going to lunch with Karen. Lunch was lots of fun. Upon getting home, we discovered that Deirdre and Gavin were sick and that Kathy and Ken were snowed in, in Eastern Washington, and so there was no gathering or gift exchange going to happen that afternoon. So by that time we had LOTS of gifts and LOTS of food and ...
Um. Ted's just come back from the vet with Chanti and I've lost my train of thought. Apparently we have a chubby puppy. She has to lose 15 pounds! Just like the rest of us!
There are about a hundred trillion Christmas photos here. If you just want to go for the cute, the pictures of Breic start on this page. Because I can, now I will post some of my faaaaaavorites.
Breic Hugh:
Deirdre, Grandma and Catie watch Ted lift Breic WAY UP HIGH!
Now that I think about it, there were more comedy of error things than I reported in my oh-so-succinct writeup earlier. :)
First off, the plane managed to leave more or less on time, which was nice, and we got into Seattle fine, and rented a couple of cars, then drove to the place we were staying, which was supposed to be a ground-floor 3 bedroom unit. Well, it /was/ a 3-bedroom unit, but it was on the 3rd floor.
Have I mentioned that I'm afraid of heights? And that Mom's more afraid of heights than I am? Worse, significantly worse, than the height, was the fact that the stairs, which were open, had open backs, so you could see down three stories as you walked up the stairs. Blaaaah! It wasn't actually that horrible, but blaaaah! Furthermore, my grandma can't handle stairs at all, which is the *real* reason we needed a ground-floor unit. So at 6:30 in the morning, Dad tried to get us somewhere on the ground floor, and after a while they said 'go to bed, this will take a while.' So we did. As it turned out, it took until the next afternoon to get us a ground-floor unit, and when we went there, it was down a set of 5 steps, which... well... not really a ground-floor unit.
However, since the Saturday family gathering ended up being cancelled due to people getting sick left and right and exacerbated by the fact that at least some family members were snowed in over in Eastern Washington, it turned out to be not all that relevant. We went out to dinner with Grandma and Aunt Mabel that night, and had lots of fun. *laugh* Mabel doesn't see pictures when she reads (neither does Grandma), and the waitress at the restaurant did. :)
I need food. Whine.
Our vacation, in brief:
Breic vomited. Deirdre vomited. My back went out. Gavin vomited. Family got snowed in. Mom vomited. The roads became really, really bad. We came home. :)
Actually, despite all that, we had a really good time. More later. :)