Category Archives: Writing

Monday Morning

I love how the quality of light changes once there’s snow on the ground. I know I’m still in the honeymoon period with winter, and I fully intend to enjoy it until I get fed up come mid-January.

That Yule thing is finally starting to feel real. I should schedule a shopping trip sometime in the next couple of weeks to pick up the few gifts on my list. Shopping for presents has never been a huge thing for me, and it’s even less so the older I get. Liam is covered, most parental unit gifts are orderable on-line internet, and HRH and I tend to blank out on gifts for one another no matter what the occasion, so we’ve reached a point where we don’t stress about it. Don’t misunderstand me: scoring the perfect gift for the spouse is awesome, and when we can we do it, but generally money or circumstances or lack of inspiration lead us to not-gifting one another. It’s okay by us. We have more fun decorating and cooking anyhow.

The winter boots and the ski jacket we introduced this morning are cool in Liam’s books. Also, the new winter hat I got him (sort of a blue corduroy ball cap lined in mock shearling with earflaps that velcro under the chin so that he can’t pull it off) is a big hit. He won’t keep mittens on to save his life either, so I’m going to get a metre of polar fleece and sew two long rectangle sock-like things to pull up all the way over his arms, possibly with a strip on each of them to tie them together behind his back to further foil his Houdini inclinations. The ski jacket is part of a two-piece snowsuit, which will be great for playing but for car trips is really excessive; the problem is, the ski jacket on its own is a bit short for the trips between the house and the car. Sometimes it feels like there is no way to win, but as this snowsuit was secondhand I’m not complaining. I’ll keep my eyes open for a longer winter coat, but at least it isn’t pressing.

New words so far today: “window” and “camera”. We’re working on “snowman”. And the boy has decided that pulling a scarf on (anyone’s scarf, which means I see him draping my lace one around his neck sometimes) and holding out a pair of someone’s gloves for them to put on is a good way to tell us that it’s time to go out.

Nixie has taken to curling up on my desk just to the left of my keyboard, with her head on the corner. Good company for the last day of tweaking ESTC. (Insert nail-biting here.)

Thoughts on a Grey Day

It has taken me over an hour to realise that I have been working with no music on. All that time instead, I had the new Loreena McKennitt album running through my brain. Actually setting it to play in the real world frees my brain RAM up to do other things, like, oh, work properly.

Coming to the end of the time I have in which to touch it up, I find that ESTC is much better than I remember it, and yet still so very far from being the very serious spiritual self-examination I originally envisioned it being. In actual execution it became a more practical collection of information and exercises designed to sort out how one feels about various aspects of pregnancy within a Pagan spiritual context, and while it’s very good, it’s not what I wanted it to be. Apples and oranges, really, and I’m very proud of what it is, but I do feel a bit wistful about the book that never was. Silly Imp would likely tell me that the book-that-isn’t is still in me to write after a few more years of thought and introspection, and she’s probably right.

Things are being cancelled left, right, and centre today thanks to the dreadful weather. Both HRH and Liam are home, which is doing nothing for the absolute silence and solitary feeling I need to work. I love them both, but Liam is crazy due to those lower canines, and I pick up on that as well as the frustration HRH feels when he deals with Liam in a mood like this. Plus with my office right next to the living room, well, it feels like we’re all in the same room a lot of the time. It’s days like this when I wish I had a writing haven at the bottom of the garden, something like a one-room tiny cottage with excellent insulation and an electric kettle with which to boil water for tea. (And an awesome sound system. It could double as a cello practice studio.)

It being December first, I opened this year’s new Christmas CD and put it on. Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong: very pleasant. Lots of piano.

Break’s over.

I Aten’t Dead

Tired, tired, tired. Working lots. I also played six hours of cello on Wednesday, what with two rehearsals for different groups. By eight o’clock I was brain-dead, which led to me either completely being in the cello zone, or not able to play three notes after one another. (Guess which mindset I was in when we were playing the cello-only parts of the Messiah. As long as everyone else was playing, though, I was fine. I intend to go through a couple of pieces and write the bowing in for every single note, because it was what tripped me up the most Wednesday night.)

The novella’s rolling along, and it’s about seventy-five percent complete at 52K. (Of course, a third of what’s currently there will end up being thrown out, but them’s the breaks in a first draft.) Touch-ups in ESTC have slowed as I have reached the point where I have to really think out what changes/updates I want to make, if any at all, and decide if they’d be any better than what’s already there. Overall, I’m surprised at how minor the changes I’ve made have been, but there has been lots of thought behind each of those changes.

Liam and I took the bus to the shops today for various things, and he was very good. (It helped that the weather was ridiculously warm, around fourteen degrees above the seasonal average. Of course, we’re about to pay for it with freezing rain and snow and plummeting temps.) His lower canines are now making him crazy. New words: “broom”, “angel”, he’s been saying “Santa” as of yesterday (here we go!), and why do I keep forgetting to record that he says “turtle” and has been doing it for over a month? New foods today: the lettuce, raw green pepper, and black olives from my sandwich were all hits, and he ate more of the breaded chicken nugget at dinner than I expected him to. He and his broom are inseparable. (Well, the broom probably doesn’t care much, but he does.) I gave him his first haircut last night — cut off those long curls at the back of his head. He looks tidier, but I loved those curls. Oddly, now the rest of his hair looks longer.

Adding ribbon loops and making labels for the herbal sachets I’ve made for a local Yule craft fair is on tonight’s and tomorrow’s list of things to do. And I keep feeling that there’s something else I’m forgetting, although my brain is fairly certain that there isn’t.

Week-Long Writing Roundup

I really do post these things for my own future benefit, you know. I use my own archives as reference all the time when working through subsequent books.

ESTC: Many more carrots, although it remains to be seen if these carrots are baby carrots or full carrots, and if they will stay carrots or be removed and held for future use somewhere else.

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 46,903
The final MS target length remains roughly 60,000, although I will certainly go over that before it is declared done as I intend to write both endings and then choose which one feels the best fit.

Nov 22: 3,013
Nov 23: 2,408
Nov 24: 5,352
Nov 25: 0
Nov 26: 2,231
Nov 27: 5,283

This is flowing well and relatively easily, although I will have to rearrange things once the first draft is complete in order for the timeline to make more sense. I’m leaving little marks in the text indicating where I’ll have to rejig things.

Books And Brooms (Or, Is It Child Labour If The Child Does It Voluntarily?)

You haven’t heard from me because I’ve been working up a storm. Things are going very well, but I’m drained; writing is work, no matter how enjoyable it is, and at the end of a day I often feel as tired as I used to feel after a day of retail. I’m still uncertain about the new things I’m adding/old things I’m changing in the-book-that-will-probably-not-be-known-as-ESTC, but second-guessing the improvements is always a given at this point in the game. And the novella is charging along. As it has evolved I’m beginning to see that it could end in two very different ways, instead of the way I had planned, and I think I will write both endings to see which works best. I expect the novella to be done by the end of the year.

Today Liam and I dropped HRH off at work and went to the bookstore to buy holiday gifts for others, and ended up walking out with gifts for ourselves instead, the gifts we went in for not being in stock. I now have the final two books in the Temeraire series, and Liam has a book on musical instruments as well as some letters for the fridge door. We also went to the toy store and bought a broom for him, because he is obsessed with using the big corn broom we use to sweep the kitchen.

We will never have to sweep again, because once I got it out of the wrapping he proceeded to enthusiastically yet carefully sweep the entire house, including under his crib. I got him a tea set too, and as soon as that was out of the package he picked up the teapot and poured me a pretend cup of tea. I was very touched.

Also, Liam has finally figured out that shoes and socks come off, and this is what he does to entertain himself in the car. He only removes the right set, for some reason.

Both upper canine teeth are out, thank goodness. Now the lower ones can quit dallying and break the surface any time, thank you.

Novella Update

My plans for the evening were derailed, and I wasn’t happy about it. So I wrote instead.

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 31,629
Total words today: 3,013

And I did another 1,193 last night after Liam went to bed, too. (There, posterity, are you satisfied?)

I’ve been messing about with creating alternate meditations and rituals for two chapters of ESTC. I’m still not wholly certain about them at the moment, but I only started them today so they need time to evolve properly. It remains to be seen if they’ll create the effect I’m still trying to capture. I moved more things around to smooth out the final chapter too, but the eighth chapter is still defying me, possibly because birth is an incredibly spiritual thing to begin with, and to capture it in words is remarkably difficult without sounding either twee or dim.

It’s good to have two so very different projects on the go at once. When I get stuck or bored with one of them, I switch to the other and still get work done. (And don’t kid yourself — this is work. It’s what I do for a living. Some stuff I am fortunate enough to sell as partials, other stuff I need to write out before I can send it out on a quest for a home.)

An Ancient Muse, the new Loreena McKennitt album, is excellent. So is Fragile Things, the latest short fiction collection from Neil Gaiman that I started reading the other day. And in fact, I’m headed for bed to read more of it before I turn out the light.

Unexpected Mailbox Joy!

There was money in my mailbox today! Well, not actual money, but a cheque in US funds that I wasn’t expecting. I did a tech read for an excellent book in early October, and I completely forgot that the new consultant contract I’m working under pays me separately for things like that.

And you know what? Not only does this cheque completely cover what I paid for my new cello pickup, I will have extra left over. Which means I can buy both the new Loreena McKennitt album and Thomas Pynchon novel being released today without a twinge of guilt.

Hurrah!