Category Archives: Writing

Pandora Update

After the general life meltdown on Wednesday, Friday proved to be much more productive.

Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 70,243
New words today: 1,639
Carrots: many

80k is looking awfully close for so much to be wrapped up in time. At least I’ve finally got the main protagonist in the right place to communicate essential info to the other members of the protagonist team, the final clue has appeared, and I think now all that has to be done is the characters working out what the hell to do with it all. Remember — no concrete antagonist. The antagonist is Life and That’s Just The Way Things Happened. So no satisfying confrontation, just lots of arguing, and characters choosing future paths, and people Learning Valuable Things.

It’s going to be very hard to pull off successfully. Part of me still wants to designate someone or a selection of someones to blame and have a terrific war in return for major parts of a world annihilated and a toxin introduced into the fabric of the universe. Clean living and positive thinking seem kind of weak as general answers, but that’s essentially what the solution looks like from here. Oh, and the promise of a better tomorrow thanks to the protagonist team working to reverse some of the damage physically and spiritually, but again, it’s just not as satisfying as an all-out war.

I know, I know. This has never been that kind of story. It’s been about perception, and the definition of beauty and purity, and what amounts to racism or xenophobia, with a smattering of class prejudice and Luddism (or possibly Neo-Luddism, actually, now that I think about it). Changing an entire culture’s outlook isn’t a small thing in the least, especially when tricky tension-fraught diplomacy is the force used instead of violence. This kind of ending requires more finesse, and my inner critic is trying to avoid it by telling me I can’t handle it, that’s all.

Weekend Roundup

I’m pretty out of it today. I’m fighting a bad sinus cold, and the medication I’m taking for it is making me feel loopy. Apart from that the weekend, though fun, pretty much wiped me out.

I’m very glad HRH and made it out to the museum to see the Once Upon a Time Disney exhibit on Friday night, even if we only got there 45 minutes before the museum closed. “You know we close at nine?” the kind attendant said as I bought our tickets. “Yes, but this is the only time we can be here before it ends,” I said. HRH and I go through exhibits at exactly the same speed, plus there really weren’t too many other people in our way, so it was the perfect time to have gone and the precise amount of time needed. I think we’d have appreciated another half-hour to go back and look at things that really interested us, but we got what we needed out of the visit. It was terrific to see the various European art influences on Disney design.

Saturday morning we went to an old friend’s wedding, and if I hadn’t had the wedding I’d had, I would have chosen to have this one. It was a perfect day with lovely weather, in a lovely location, with around fifty people in attendance, excellent food, and wonderful company. We had to leave before dessert, but such is the compromise when one has a child with his own social schedule.

We got home, changed, grabbed the boy, thanked Grandma for playing with him while we were out, and headed over for the last half of Arthur’s birthday party. It was great to unexpectedly see some people I hadn’t seen in a few months (and further proof, if it was necessary, that the world is a Very Small Place), and of course, fete the birthday boy. (Every kid needs his own pirate ship!)

Sunday I woke up with the cold worse than it had been and managed to slog through the morning while preparing for the Midsummer rit that afternoon. Said rit came off excellently, and was perfectly timed with Liam’s nap. Liam joined us afterwards for melon and Cool Whip and homemade lemonade, all of which was delicious. Then we headed over to the in-laws’, and moments after walking into the house the weekend and the cold caught up with me. I effectively passed out, unable to do more than utter monosyllabic words, watch Liam play, or eat more than three bites of dinner. Once home we put Liam to bed, I took more medication, and passed out at eight o’clock.

Theoretically I should be embarking on the first day of a four-week contract, but there’s been no communication from the company despite a prompt from me last Friday, so I suppose today is a bonus day. Good thing; I can’t really focus on much. I may try to work on my own stuff later; I may just crash and read.

Pandora Update

Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 68,604
New words today: 3,144

One entire chapter done in a full day of writing. See, this is what I can do when I have consecutive days in which to work, instead of a day on and a day off, which requires me to use valuable writing time to get back into the right headspace. Four more to go, plus an in-between and a conclusion. 80K is coming up awfully fast.

I went out this morning and cut a rose off my Alba tea rose bush (which was white last year but a very pale pink this year) plus a handful of blossoming lavender, and put them in my little Caithness vase on my desk The scent is so strong I had to open my window to diffuse it. Great weather, by the way; it can stay not-humid and on the cool side for as long as it likes. It was cool enough to wear socks today.

Busy weekend ahead: HRH and I have plans to catch at least an hour of a museum exhibit tonight, then two engagements tomorrow, then a ritual and a belated father’s day family thing on Sunday.

Pandora Update

Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 65,460
New words today: 1,898

Today’s research included algal blooms (AKA phytoplankton explosions), botany, plant genetics, environmental sciences, the Royal Society, Nicolas Culpeper, Robert Hooke, and Charles II. (Seriously.) Now I know a little more about this new character, and what his background is like, and ta-da, one of the HOWS I’ve been trying to nail down. Which in turn nails down the Not Deliberate Evil Just The Result Of A Chance Event/Action (which occurred three centuries ago) path for the novel’s plot to follow.

Unguided evil; evil that has evolved on its own. Societal/environmental. Lovely. No real enemy to fight. How the hell are they going to succeed?

Sigh

One of the problems with writing a character who is a tech/computer whiz is that I have no idea how she does the things she does. And inevitably someone asks her. Usually it’s my protagonist, who should know better by now because all she does is look him in the eye and say, “If I explained it you wouldn’t understand anyhow, so why don’t we just say I did and you’re awed by the magnitude of my talent, and we’ll move on?”

I love Pandora, I really do.

But it doesn’t help that since she started working with tech-focused fae, together they’ve merged computer science and magic and now what she does is even more of a mystery to me. My protagonist and I just take it in stride. We have to. If we think about it too long we grow afraid of the opportunity for world domination, which would sidetrack the story.

Pandora Update

I now have an icon for the posts focusing on the Pandora book.

Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 63,562
New words today: 1,392

I slacked. Well, I thought a lot, because the story’s at a point where I have to make certain decisions about the conclusion and Why People Did Things, and Are They Really Evil Or Is All This Just The Way The Universe Works (leaning towards the latter, actually, teaching my teenagers-on-the-verge-of-adulthood a Lesson that is satisfying in one way while being slightly unsatisfying in another) and once my internet connection had been restored I did some research, and then spent way too much time clicking through to various places I didn’t really need to click through to. The laundry’s done, though. Forgot to put the dishwasher on again, however. I’ll go do that now.

But I did slack. If I hadn’t kept wandering off I could have done more than this. Now when I sit down again I’ll be basically at the same place: exposition handled by a new character explaining his past and revealing that he’s not a Bad Guy (but his actions have led to something Bad happening), before my protagonists can act. Or come up with a possible plan to act upon, first. I hate this part of a story; picking through the potential paths I could take and trying to figure out which one would work best is not fun at all for me. I prefer it when my characters just go ahead and do things true to their personalities, and I discover the story as they go. Now comes careful plotting and pulling together of plot threads and pinning down certain things, and it’s been stalling me for months. Oh, I have the general outline, but it’s the tiny things that get the story from A to B to C that are frustrating me now. The details all need to be considered in order for it to work properly.

Nine-Thirty? It Feels Like Three In The Afternoon

It occurred to me as I pulled into the driveway last night that I should assign myself lines to write. Something along the idea of, I will not listen to ‘Jack Sparrow’ with volume set at 22 while driving through construction zones at night on the way home from orchestra. A hundred times or so.

Slept horribly again, and Liam is fractious. So naturally, HRH was called in to replace someone at work today. We made pancakes together after he left; Liam stirred. There is currently a movie playing, because I am weak of will this morning and can’t keep up with him, and I have things to do.

There are a pile of things to do before Sunday. Like figure out what people are eating, find a good cake recipe, find a good frosting recipe (which is even more important, and no, I’ve never found one I’m completely happy with)… appropriate wrapping paper would be good, too. Ingredients for whatever I decide to make need to be purchased. I still haven’t found a cake board, and I don’t particularly feel like cutting up one of our good strong moving boxes to make one. I did find a new cake pan, but not as big as I was hoping for. I’ll double the cake batter and make cupcakes as well to be sure to have enough. I had intended to send some over to daycare on Monday on the actual birthday anyhow, along with streamers and balloons and such; might as well be a full batch instead of the half I was thinking of making.

Today I learned how to make my printer print much much faster (yes, it took me a year to find the fast draft mode). I thought I’d figured out how to do manual duplex printing too, but the printer out-thought me. It seems I have to select the option both in the Word print options and the ‘advanced’ printer options for it actually work. Now I have a two-hundred page document to edit that I was hoping would only use one hundred pages, and of course I forgot to paginate it. Yesterday I bought a photo ink cartridge, and discovered only after I’d gotten home that it replaces the black cartridge, not the dangerously-low-on-ink colour cartridge, so I only got another half-dozen photos printed before the regular colour ink gave out entirely.

On the other hand, I picked up an excellent selection of summer tops and two skirts yesterday as well, so I can throw out all the t-shirts that have somehow developed microscopic holes in them. I still don’t own a pair of shorts, which is fine with me.

I wrote eight hundred and something words yesterday. Granted, they were slightly expanded transcription from handwritten notes in a notebook, but it counts. My record sheet tells me that I haven’t put a single word into Swan Sister since early February, which sounds about right. That would be when I had to stop because there was a huge gap between everything I’d plotted and the outlined ending, a gap I didn’t think was as big as it was until I got there and couldn’t see the other side, as I’d expected to.

All right. Into the living room to keep the boy company. I will read with sticky notes and a pencil while he watches Buzz Lightyear, his favourite movie character these days.