Author Archives: Autumn

Writing Truisms

Matociquala reminds everyone about one of the overlooked/unknown truths regarding professional writing:

(this pro writer thing isn’t just writing. There are page proofs, interviews, research, contracts, business nonsense, copy-edits. There is slush to read. There is Stuff. Stuff takes up a couple of hours a day. Every day. Some days it can take ALL DAY.)

and

continued creative output requires continuous creative input.

The Stuff can really mire you down. Particularly if, like me, you forget that it’s part and parcel of the whole career while you’re doing it, and think it doesn’t qualify as Real Work.

From Argh to Grr

The day has officially passed Argh and is well into Grr now.

I left my purse at daycare, and only realised it when I got home. And now no one is there to open it for me.

So, just in case that’s not clear: No wallet, no glasses. This means no driving. Ergo, no orchestra tonight.

*tears hair*

After all my psyching up for it, too.

I am such an idiot. The good thing is that having done it I won’t do it again soon, because I’ll be hyper-aware of my bag now. It’s just so small and light that I don’t notice it when I’m loaded with boy and gear.

Gnash, gnash.

Swan Sister Update

Total word count, Swan Sister: 26,751
New words today: 1,736

It takes a while to get going, but once I’m in motion it goes well. I hate that I don’t have consecutive days in which to work, though; it takes me hours to get back into the flow of thought and theme. And there’s so many layers in this story that I need to be in the right headspace for it to happen correctly, otherwise I just flail around, which gets neither me nor the book anywhere.

Off to get the boy. Orchestra tonight. No idea what will happen in that dinner-shaped space in between.

Argh!

Oh, bloody hell —

There’s a fairy-tale Swan Sister book already. Not my story, thank goodness, but the title. Bah. (Also a non-fairy tale book, but this disturbs me less.)

Yes, yes, I know there are hundreds of books that share similar or identical titles with one another out there. But when one believes one has come up with a perfect title, and discovers that someone else already did, it somewhat takes the wind out of one’s sails. And I know perfectly well that a working title has nothing to do with the final title, more often than not. Still: argh.

Meandering

Winter decided to catch up all in one day and gave us around 25 cm of snow. We now have piles of snow at the end of the driveway higher than my head. The cold finally caught up to us as well, and this morning’s temperature was a nippy -23 C, or -32 C with windchill. Shovelling the snow on Monday, as tiring as it was, felt right. Psychologically, everything was back in the correct place. The light is so much brighter outside too, what with the sun reflecting off the snow. And despite everyone getting up earlier on purpose, it’s taking longer to get Liam out the door on his daycare days now that the cold and snow are here. Hello, winter; I can honestly say that yes, I have missed you, but don’t overdo it.

Mailbox joy: I received my delivery cheque for the book-that-will-likely-not-be-known-as-ESTC. Of course, the majority of it goes to pay taxes. But still, it’s nice to have received it.

I reread Jane Austen’s Persuasion the other day, because I’d (finally) hit my saturation point in Philippa Gregory’s Tudor-era novels, and wanted something very particular. Persuasion was one of my least favourite Austen novels until this reread. Now I think it’s leapfrogged into first place. It’s interesting to see how my tastes change as I grow older, and different things in the story affect me.

I’ve been feeling flopsy and unfocused over the past couple of days. Liam threw his schedule to the winds yesterday and refused to take a nap when he usually does, pushing it back by an hour (which is utterly unlike him). This was moderately stressful for us both since we had a date to spend the afternoon with his godmother, but it all turned out in the end. Good thing, too, because I really needed to be able to sit in a big comfy chair with a mug of good tea and let someone else be the primary eyes on the toddler for a couple of hours. Halfway there I realised that parking would very likely be a nightmare what with the snow everywhere and removal proceeding at the usual sloth-like pace, but after a soul-felt prayer I was relieved to find one side of the street completely snow-free and only one other car parked on it. Very unusual, but very very welcome. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise; probably turned around and gone home feeling even more miserable and stressed.

I bought HRH his early birthday present this weekend, and he picked it up yesterday. Before the server crashed he’d hit tenth level on a new character and had done a bunch of exploring.

Right. I must find something to eat, despite my lack of enthusiasm for the project, and then I should work.

Real Music

My early afternoon has consisted of the adaptor, cables, the minidisc player, and Audacity editing software. Mildly time-consuming as I learned how to do it all, but in the end, I have nine tracks, converted to mp3 format, and now uploaded to our band folder so we can all listen to them and say “wow” and “oh, now I hear what’s supposed to be happening there” and “I will do [this particular thing] slightly differently this time because I had no idea it sounded like that”.

Nine most excellent tracks of band rehearsal on Saturday.

We are Teh Awesome. What a fabulous learning tool this is.