In the bath last night, Liam picked up the plastic snowman bottle that is one of his found toys.
BOY: This is the snowman.
A: Yes.
BOY: He needs a hammer.
A: What?
BOY: Like in the movie. Then he falls in the fish tank. And there’s a lady in it. Like Ariel.
Yes, he watched The Pixar Short Film Collection Vol. 1 collection. Can you tell?
Nothing like having just under three thousand words in a book MS after collating notes, outlines, and jotted ideas.
And I haven’t even transcribed all the handwritten notes in my notebook yet.
(New icon for the hearthwitch book! Still not one hundred percent certain it’s the right one, but the best I’ve found so far.)
Symphony
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common — this is my symphony.
~ William Henry Channing
What I need to work on: acting frankly (I second-guess myself all the time and think myself to death), talking gently (I tend to snap when I’m irritated, although thank goodness this has decreased over the past month), and hurrying never (there is always so much to do that I rush things sometimes and make them more stressful for myself).
Maggie has taken to jumping up on my desk while I work, grabbing an object, and trying to run away with it. What are we at now, the sixteen-trillionth kittenhood?
Every time I begin a book, I am reminded of how the ideas for several more spawn from the research I do. In this case, possibly a small sub-series. Sigh. Make a note, move on.
I should eat. When it get to be past noon?
The good news: The car’s engine is running cool, and in no danger of overheating.
The bad news: It’s not warming up enough to open the thermostat, making driving a rather chilly experience. And if it’s like this now when temperatures are hovering around the zero mark, it’s only going to get worse. HRH has poked around at it and we thought it had been fixed, but apparently not. I seem to remember this issue last fall, but not what we did about it. Possibly a flush and refill; it may have fixed itself, if there was a bubble in the system.
There was thick frost on the back windshield this morning, and no scraper in the car. I have no idea where HRH packs them away in the summertime, and as the boy was already strapped into his seat I couldn’t go inside and dig around the garage looking for it. I used a (clean!) wooden paint stirrer that I found in the trunk instead. It was remarkably successful at it, too.
Hearthwitch book stuff today. And administration-type things.
My parents came into town for the day yesterday, and of course that was the day the two-year-old fairy decided to visit and dump her bag of tricks over Liam’s head. He woke up at 5:30, he upended his cup of milky tea on the floor of the kitchen, he upended my cup of tea into his toy drum, he pulled over the water fountain. He screamed for an hourish after being put down for his nap, and when he woke up he didn’t want to come out and see his grandparents, calling me into his room to curl up with him on his bed instead. Eventually he came out and socialised, and he cheerfully ate a big dinner (on top of the two bowls of Cheerios and milk he devoured once he woke up from his late nap). I took my parents to the airport while HRH handled the bath and bed stuff, and the boy was in bed cooing to himself when I got home. I went in and sat on the edge of his bed and he smiled at me with sleepy eyes, as if it had been a wonderful day, and mumbled a goodnight. I kissed him, and he snuggled down with Bun-Bun and was asleep within five minutes. He didn’t wake up till 6:30 today, and was in a great mood. I think he has to have an uber-cranky day once in a blue moon to make up for how great he is the rest of the time. His cold is much much better and almost gone; I now must grudgingly admit that I have it, although it’s staying in my sinuses and is almost gone too.
It was really nice to see my parents, though.
I bought a bread maker this morning. When even no-name generic sandwich bread goes up to $2.10 a loaf, I put my foot down. I also bought black socks. It’s probably a bad sign of something when I feel that buying plain black socks is a big thing.
I mailed out my contracts for the new hearth magic book on Wednesday. Also in work-related news, I’ve been getting pings from private individuals about small editing jobs this week. One of them was an indirect response to a message I sent out requesting info as a consumer; the recipient noticed my sig file and said she wrote short stories in English, her second language, and wanted to know more about how I could clean up her work. Nothing concrete yet, just responding to queries, but more queries mean more potential for work.
I wrote about a thousand words of inane stuff in the Vivaldi novel on Wednesday. I’m restless, now that the other YA novel is finished; I can’t seem to settle into anything. Research for the hearth magic book is, of course, ongoing.
Wow; rereading my monthly Liam round-up, it must seem as if all we do is watch TV and movies with him. We don’t, of course. It’s just that they leave such an impression on him that they’re what he talks about and re-enacts and incorporates into his play.
It’s getting harder and harder to write these monthly posts. I have an ongoing draft in which I note things down all month, but when it comes time to actually expand them and link everything together in some sort of semi-coherent order, it takes longer and longer. I may start evolving them into a slightly different format. I have no idea what just yet, but something different, to save sanity and time.
I finished editing my 2002 YA novel at a writing jam last night. Next on the list of things to do: write up a precis, chapter summaries, a hook, craft a query letter and sort through all the agents I’ve bookmarked. You know, in between all the parenting and writing the other, actually contracted, book.
I’m so tired, though, that I think I’ll take a short nap then settle down with some hearthcraft research books before I have to go pick the boy up. He woke himself up coughing at 5:15 this morning, and as I hadn’t been able to get to sleep till midnight-thirty, my eyes are now rather dry and red and my brain is pretty fried.