Upon entering the house this morning, I was greeted with a sharp “BIP!” from the smoke detector, which was clearly possessed of a failing battery. Sadly, I could not cause it to stop BIP!ping, so I called my daddy and asked if he was a hero.

He came over with a ladder and a screwdriver and took it down and took the battery out while I wailed, “I’m an artist! I can’t work under these conditions!” Smoke alarm dismantled, I admired my Heroic Daddy. He looked modest. He prepared to leave. The de-batteried smoke alarm went “BIP!”

We stared at it. We stared at each other. We stared at it some more. It went, “BIP!” We examined it, and saw no visible sign of the electronics upon which it no doubt relies to make it go BIP! when the battery is dead.

It’s in the refrigerator now.

I am narrowly going to miss the mark of writing as much from January-June this year as I wrote in the entirety of 2007. The next week is incredibly hectic. I’m going back down to Cork tomorrow and coming back Sunday. The movers are packing up the house on Monday and will be here either Monday night or Tuesday morning. Aberdeen will be here Tuesday morning(ish) through…Thursday morning, maybe, or maybe only through Wednesday night. My sister’s coming out for a photo shoot Tuesday afternoon. I figure if I get 10K written in the next week I’ll be doing really, really well, and that’ll put me…about 20K short of last year’s total. Which I could theoretically make up in the remaining few days of the month after that, but I don’t think I’m really going to try. :)

I did, however, pass through the 33% mark on the book, and forged on to 40K. I’ll be really, really happy to make 50K by this time next week. That’s the next big landmark.

40,123 / 110,000 (36.5%)

ytd wordcount: 241,500
miles to Isengard: 18.4

currently: busy

I’m guest blogging today over at miladyinsanity!

Unless this chapter does something totally unexpected, I’m not going to finish this book today. Knowing this makes working on it somewhat less fun. Unfortunately, if I don’t work on it, I won’t finish the damned thing tomorrow, either, and I have *got* to have it turned in by Wednesday because I’ve got AAs to do for HANDS OF FLAME, and they’ve already given me a week extension on those while I try to finish up TPC.

Also, surprisingly, someone sent me a Lilith Saintcrow ARC to read. I have absolutely no recollection of being asked to read one, so I don’t know if I’m just a random fortunate recipient or if they’re hoping for a cover quote. :)

currently: working

Yesterday, after spending three days slogging through genuinely not very good writing, I did something I’ve never done before while writing a book: I gave myself permission to skip the hard part.

Mostly I don’t do that, because mostly if I skip a bit when I come back to that part I’ve forgotten that I /did/ skip something, and I’m really pissed off and it’s not any easier to write it than it would’ve been in the first place, but with added bonus of being pissed about the whole thing.

*Usually* what I have to do is go back and revise up to the point where it’s broken (ie, the hard part) and then go on from there. And I really, really *really* don’t want to do that this time; I want to just get the damned draft done, and then go back and fix things. That also usually wouldn’t work, because I often don’t know exactly what has to come of the borked scene(s), so I can’t actually go on and write what comes next without finding out what happens in that scene.

In this case, I /do/ know exactly what comes after the borked scene (which is screwed up is because I don’t have all the support structure earlier in the book to make it work, and so I’m finding myself unable to write _that scene_ correctly. I know how to fix it, but right now going back and fixing the lead-up doesn’t feel very damned efficient.). So I told myself I could skip it the hard part. I gave myself the rest of the afternoon off. I went grocery shopping and watched more of season 3 BSG with Ted.

And today I got up and have written 3700 words so far on the next scene, and am feeling reasonably confident about getting up to around 5K today. (I’d been planning to be Really Ambitious, and push through 140,667 words, which would officially make this the Longest Book I’ve Written, but that’s an additional 3K, and I don’t think I got up early enough to make this an 8K day. It’s 4pm. I don’t see getting through another 5300 words today, not realistically. So maybe tomorrow this will become the Longest Book.) After grinding through much smaller wordcounts at huge effort the last few days, this rate of writing feels really nice.

Arright. Another 1300 words will make a good solid writing day. Back on my head.

currently: determined

I woke up this morning with “Wheels On The Bus (Go Round and Round)” stuck in my head. I don’t even have any children on whom this can be blamed. This *cannot* be a good sign…

Thinks to do this evening if I can hold my brain together enough to do them:
- answer matrice mail
- answer dabel mail
- answer fan mail
- watch Torchwood (this, I can do)

*sigh* All right, off to a slightly later start than the last couple days. I plead for encouragement today. I’m going to need it.