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nibs & nobs
If it were not for the word wars, I *know* I wouldn’t have gotten my chapter done today, and I got the impression several other people wouldn’t have written much, either. But about seven people showed up despite this general malaise, so I’m really delighted by that. The wars are working! :)
The inestimable Judith Tarr is commissioning original short stories, mentoring opportunities, and perhaps even a commissioned novel, so if there’s a world of hers you’d like to revisit, or if you’re an aspiring writer who would like advice from one of the most incredibly talented women in the sf/f business, this is your chance.
I am personally deeply curious about how the commissioning of short stories and potential novels will go, as someday I’ll get around to writing CENTENARIAN and am still thinking of that in terms of a you-got-it-here-first novel-length subscription piece.
I actually did everything on my to-do list yesterday, and also wrote 1900 words. The upshot, though, was I decided I wasn’t applying for the arts council bursary award this time around, because it’s due tomorrow and I just don’t have my shit sufficiently together to get it in. Or, rather, I could, but it would have meant sacrificing two days of working on the book, which I’m trying to finish by next Friday. Given that the book means a sure-fire paycheck and the grant application does not, I’m okay with this. There’s a second round for this award later in the year; I’ll get it done for that.
Uh. Oh. And although I’m too wasted to do it today, I did go out and take pictures yesterday. This was the one worth saving. Also, my nephews like its title, which is good because I was thinking of them when I named it. :)
And we’re going to go see Wolverine tonight. Yay!
ytd wordcount: 155,000
miles to Minas Tirith: 216.5
ytd km swum: 39.2 -
argghglt!
Arghglgg. 3600 words today, which I thought was enough, but it puts me at 149,900 words for the year! Argh! But Nook’s already shut down, so I guess I’ll just have to break 150K first thing tomorrow and carry on. I did pass the 2/3rds mark, which is nice. And broke 300 pages.
Swam a measly 500 meters this morning, which is not in my estimation worth getting wet for, but I’m trying not to re-injure my shoulder (which, miraculously, has improved *hugely* since I went back to typing at the fifteen hundred dollar ergonomically correct chair and keyboard, go figure), so I’ll probably keep doing that this week and step up to a whole 750 next week and then hopefully I’ll be done with the book and not typing as much, so will be less damage-prone. Or something.
Um. There was at least one other thing I meant to post, but I seem to have forgotten what it was. Perhaps I should go cook dinner instead of trying to remember.
miles to Minas Tirith: 211
ytd wordcount: 149,900 (KHAAAAAAAN!!!!!!)
ytd km swum: 38.7 -
what i have learned
I have learned that the all-day chat structure isn’t going to work for /me/, so week-after-next I will open a chat room at 9pm GMT/4pm EDT/1pm PDT and run it for about 90 minutes before sluffing off to bed. (I figure next week is Easter so there’s no point in trying to run a chat then.)
I think I /will/ go ahead and open a daily chat room for word wars. I’ll post the url at my writing community,
, rather than here, because it seems more appropriate, and the people who want to use it will know where to find it. I sort of imagine the result will be me writing in the morning on my own time, and then maybe catching people for hour-long writing bursts as the US sort of comes online as my day progresses. We’ll see. :) Ted and I brought Breic and Seirid to the movies yesterday (we saw “Bolt”, which we all liked), and they were wonderfully well-behaved and ate popcorn and sweets and sodas and were generally quite charming. It was fun. :)
And Ted and I had our second swimming lesson tonight. I’m enjoying these a lot, and he hasn’t tried killing me in my sleep yet, so I think they’re going well. I’ll be swimming 6 days a week if we get 3 lessons a week in for him, so that’s a win on many levels.
miles to Minas Tirith: 160
ytd km swum: 34.8
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posty ms. posts-a-lot
See, I told you. Lots of posts. :p (and I am of course typing at the laptop, so either I’m not suffering that much or I’m really stupid.)
I thought I’d start the weight loss chat room this coming Sunday, the 5th of April. The most widely agreeable time was ‘open at chat room at 9am Pacific and let it run all day’, which translates to running–at least with me as a participant–until about 1pm Pacific/5pm Eastern/10pm Greenwich, so that’s what I’ll do, and I’ll sort of assume that the peak participation time will be around noon Pacific/4pm Eastern/9pm Greenwich.
Totally non-related, I’ve been observing the various bushes and plants and trees we’ve planted, and so far the apple tree and the cherry tree seem to be doing very well, as are the strawberries. Some of the raspberry plants are starting to get leaves, and I have one planter that looks suspiciously like it’s been planted with sticks and nothing else. :) But then, the other day I was thinking in terms of planting and growing things and my brain decided it must be late June, because it was utterly absurd to be planting things in the middle of March. In the land of my people the earth is still buried beneath several feet of snow in the middle of March. :)
Fairly random question, because I haven’t been doing much with kitsnaps anyway, but if it was set up in a more typical blog format, with scroll-down for older entries instead of click-throughs, would that be more appealing? It just struck me that the photoblog I like best is set up that way. Hm.
Oh, right. Extending the PRETENDER’S CROWN contest through the weekend and up til next Tuesday, ’cause people’ve asked if they could have the weekend so they can look at the book again and think harder. I’ve loved some of the ideas that’ve come through…and you don’t have to cast *everybody*! I didn’t mean to make it so hard! :)
Tonight we’re going to the pool and I’m going to start teaching Ted how to swim (as opposed to stay alive in the water, which he’s quite competent at). Hopefully we won’t end up wanting to kill each other. :)
I think I’ll go finish reading a book now.
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what, was it too hard?
Was yesterday’s contest thingy too hard, or is everybody off doing non-internet-related things? V. few responses! Or maybe it’s just nobody’s read TQB… :)
I’m going to go start work on the latest Walker Papers (which is currently untitled and will therefore be referred to as Jo Vs. The Cannibals until it gets a title) in a few minutes. “Start work” in this case may mean “going to go re-write the synopsis in much more detail, because it has occurred to me that the books that have gone most smoothly were the ones where I’ve had more, rather than less, in the way of synopsis”. The greatest payoff of thorough synopsizing was the “Banshee Cries” novella, for which I had a synopsis as long as any of the ones for the full-length books, and which I wrote in 3 days, 10K a day. I’m not aiming for 10K days, but if I can hammer out a synopsis that helps me get a chapter a day done without too much agony, that’s a win. Perhaps I’ll discover that I’m really a plotter, not a pantser.
I went for a little swim this morning, just a mile. My shoulder is…okay. Achier than I’d like, but not debilitating. I’ll take some aspirin and go work at my Good Keyboard, and perhaps that’ll allow it to relax a bit and to stop aching.
Arright, folks. Cover me. I’m going in.
ytd km swum: 29.6
miles to Minas Tirith: 147.5