Category Archives: Writing

Grr

I cannot for the life of me settle down to work on something today. Part of my problem is that I’m not immediately in the middle of a project. And since there’s nothing I have to work in, I get to choose what I’d like to work on, and despite the list of in-progress-at-various-stages novels/novellas and so forth, none of them are calling me. I also can’t pick music to listen to, so I’ve just set my whole collection of MP3s on shuffle. Except now I’m hearing things I don’t recognise and hovering my cursor over the icon of the player to see what it is.

Another more significant part of the problem, I suspect, is that I’m very much in limbo. I’m waiting for word on the pregnancy book. I’m waiting for the editorial letter and first set of edits addressing the hearthcraft book. I’m waiting for the go-ahead from the gaming company to continue developing content. I’m waiting for the publisher for whom I’m doing the freelance manuscript reviews to finish moving and restart operations again.

I wonder if I’m somewhat burnt out. I want to be working on something, I do, because I feel irritated and useless when I’m not. I don’t like feeling irritated, because then when the day is over I feel very nasty about myself because I haven’t accomplished or advanced anything. It’s a stupid, stupid work ethic thing and I can’t shake it.

What I want to do is play the 7/8 again. I don’t want this instrument to eat my brain when I could be using those grey cells for something else. I spent much too much time searching for new hard cases that would fit a 7/8 on the internet this morning. (My old hard case is cracked and weighs a tonne, and my current large 4/4 doesn’t even fill it entirely; a 7/8 would rattle around dangerously in it, beyond what extra padding could do.) I experimented with possible names for it during one of my many wakeful moments last night. Nothing yet. This doesn’t indicate anything yet beyond the fact that it didn’t steal my soul the moment I played it.

I don’t feel like reading, either. Grr, grr, grr.

Parallels

Michelle West writes an excellent parallel between writing books and mothering here.

A belated Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. My day began very early, waking up with a jump at the crash made by a small boy dropping a play tea set on the floor next to the bed ( “Oh hi, Mama, I making you tea!”), moved through brunch with the Preston-LeBlanc clan (complete with smoked salmon, mimosas, a heaping bowl of fresh strawberries, and waffles), and ended with an afternoon with HRH’s parents and excellent steak.

Good Things

Life is remarkably miserable these days, so I’m trying to look for good things to share instead of the crap. Here’s a selection.

1. I read two books yesterday, Hale’s Austenland and Clark’s Because She Can. I’m so glad the boy is at an age where I don’t have to actively play with him all the time. Once in a while we can be in the same room or out in the backyard together, each doing our own thing with periodic interaction. This doesn’t work all the time: the boy has to be in a secure enough headspace to allow it. But yesterday was one of those days. There were other trade-offs, however, and other things were not as successful, which was very frustrating.

2. Last Tuesday I wrote twelve pages of Swan Sister longhand. I know I said the Vivaldi novel had ambushed my brain, but evidently I was wrong.

3. And perhaps Swan Sister‘s not the winner after all, because I sat down on Monday afternoon and drafted a two-paragraph summary and then a two-page synopsis for a new YA novel that had occurred to me. Because, you know, I don’t have enough unfinished YA novels lying around. At least this one has a full outline, up to a point at the end. I know that the protagonist’s obstacle gets worked through and she achieves her goal, and even how it happens, but there’s a secondary story in there about another character that affects her and that goal and I’m not sure how that resolves yet. Or even if it needs to be resolved, really; the protagonist may just go on being the only one to know this character’s secret. I’ve never written a full synopsis for a novel before it’s been written, and it was a very interesting exercise. I may even try to write the novel now. (I mean, of course I’ll write it at some point, and I didn’t expect to want to write it immediately. But it’s all there, so to speak.)

4. I’m sleeping okay, which I am trying to see as a tolerable trade-off for the increased pain I’m experiencing these days.

5. Sun is nice and good. Cats all returned to a level of sanity is also good. Life is less stressful when they’re all normal. (As normal as my cats, or any cats really, get.)

Weekend: Strike

It has been a thoroughly awful six days or so. There’s a lot of stuff flying around that I’m trying to handle, and I’ve lost it a couple of times in the past few days. I don’t like doing that. It makes me even angrier and more discouraged about things in general.

The weekend was a mass of engagements and scheduled events that didn’t give me the time or space I needed to really recompose myself. The cold rainy weather didn’t help at all, especially when there is a three year old screaming to play in the back garden. I did carve three or so hours out of the weekend to spend with t!, something we haven’t done in so long that neither of us can remember the last time we did it. There were copious amounts of tea, theorizing, analysing, and then there was port. Plus there was the very enjoyable bonus of seeing Jan, who came home from her weekend away earlier than expected, so she had a glass of port too and we all talked. I shared a music-related idea with t! that excited him and also interested Jan when I shared it with her later at his request. Knowing that other people think it’s a good idea heartened me immensely. I think it has a lot of potential. I need to chew on it for a while, and t! told me to bring it up with him again early next month. I’ll need to by then, because new associated ideas keep blooming in my head. It will all have to be managed carefully.

I had to replay the third level of the stupid DS game for kids I’m working through right now three times last night. I wasn’t going to go to bed till I’d beaten it. Dumb game. It’s easy, too; I’m just having the same problem I always have, sacrificing speed for precision.

The computer is still dead, and I’ve fed all my peripherals into the laptop and loaded requisite software. I may move the laptop to the writing desk and connect the monitor as well, because I strained my neck and back looking down at the laptop screen last Friday. I did hand in the first assignment for the new project I’m doing with the big unnamed game company though, and now I’m awaiting edits and feedback. The computer situation is a big part of what’s really pushing me to the edge these days. I really, really dislike transitional periods, and I’m stuck in limbo for two weeks. Three, really, because realistically I won’t be able to do anything about it until we come home from visiting my parents over Victoria Day weekend. Blade came down Saturday morning to try slipping the hard drive into an old computer HRH still hasn’t returned to ADZO (someday, someday!) and as I suspected it’s not the drive, which means it must be the motherboard or processor or something else that’s hanging up. I just don’t want to have to copy over all my profiles to a temporary system and then do it again. The laptop is fine for now.

That’s the state of me for the moment. If you’ve tried to email me or have been expecting an answer about something important that I haven’t yet given, try me again. The pre-yesterday email is all stuck on the other computer. And forgive any extended silences and lack of enthusiasm about things in general.

From Good To Not So Good

Well, I’m glad I had a good morning.

I’ve just found out that the pagan pregnancy book was one of the two titles cut from my publisher’s fall list, because advance sales and pre-orders weren’t high enough. Two had to go, and mine was one of them. My editor is storming offices and tiger-taming magnificently, and has managed to get the sales and marketing department to agree to put it on hold instead. At the moment the most obvious option is to retitle it, making it more general and less specific to get it out from the niche-y complaint they had about it, which in turn may bolster sales to the big chains in the US. Sales and marketing suggested altering the content as well but neither my editor nor I think that necessary, as it’s already pretty broad.

I am strangely sanguine about this. I think that over the course of the hearthcraft book, what with all the struggling about the contract and the title (I haven’t gone into that battle here and won’t), I’ve finally accepted that these books are not really mine. I write them for the publisher under a work for hire contract, they pay me, and it’s theirs to do with as they will when I’m done. I regret that a solid book that can really help people in a certain position might not see the light of day, but it’s not the end of the world. If changing the title, the back cover copy, and maybe the introduction will help get it out there, then I’m all for it.

So if you were looking forward to buying it at the end of the summer, you’ll just have to wait a little longer until such time as they decide to reschedule the release. Unless something major is done in the next month, I can’t see any changes being applied in time to maintain the release date.

Friday

In a nutshell, here’s what’s going on:

I interviewed today for a writing-associated position on a game that expands upon the game I worked on last spring, and by the end of the interview the producer said, “Well as far as I’m concerned you’re on the team already, so let’s talk money and time.” In short, I have everything I was concerned about not having: the pay I’ve asked for, flex time, working at home, and the week off when my first round of edits come along, and being on tap for the next round of stuff that’s needed for the game. Plus I have the very excellent bonus of working on a game that will help people understand the art of conversation, how to think through a problem and achieve certain goals using dialogue, and other neat stuff. I am still moderately in a state of stun, as I was expecting to have to turn it down because I thought it would be another full-time in-house deal. Part of the coolness of the project is that it’s still at the development stage; they need content to work with before design goes any further, and that’s why I’m with them.

They laughed when I told them there were now two DS units and a Wii in the house, and that it was their fault.

The car we’d crawled all over and had taken for a test drive Monday evening… was sold last night, eighteen hours before HRH was scheduled to go in and begin negotiating for it. To me this means that this was not our car and we should ask them to keep an eye out for exactly the same thing — which they have already found for us. Go team us! The new one is a year younger, has less than half the kilometres, and is only about $1500 more.

We found a baby squirrel who had fallen out of its lofty nest yesterday afternoon, and after watching for the mama squirrel and fending off neighbourhood cats for a couple of hours, Scarlet took it in. I came home today to discover her at work trying to hold a second baby and draw formula up into a syringe with the other hand. Looks like their mama is history; this second one is skin and bones. I helped feed and deflea the second one, and it’s simply adorable. They’re so young their eyes aren’t even open yet. I’ll be going up to feed it again in half an hour so Scarlet can keep working on her paper.

While I was out there was another plumbing emergency, one that entailed someone getting into our apartment to go into the panel backing onto the bathroom pipes. Seems that when the bathtub was replaced the places that were supposed to be sealed weren’t. The landlord apologised and said it was his fault. What I want to know is why it took five years for this to start leaking downstairs. Anyhow it’s been handled (thank you, Scarlet, for using your keys to get the landlord in and being the Responsible Adult on the Premises while he fixed things), and the backyard plumbing thing was fixed on Wednesday.

I think that’s all at the moment. The boy and I are both still fighting colds. I can’t decide if he has an eye infection or not; sometimes I think he does, and then the symptoms vanish and I’m left suspecting he just has allergies. I’m still having difficulty with the throat/breathing thing myself, and part of that is a cold while the rest is my sensitivity to All Things Green, which just so happen to be going wild right now. The baby leaves out there are so soft and such a perfect green!.

Have an excellent weekend, everyone.