Category Archives: Writing

Gnash Gnash

Argh. A paltry 534 new words after two hours of work, because for some reason I chose to work on a section that required a lot of flipping through books and looking up information, thus not giving me a lot of actual word yield for my time. I should have chosen a topic and just brainstormed on it for a few pages instead. Bad planning on my part. Even taking into account the fact that Monday’s work put me a few hundred words ahead of the game, I’m now officially three hundred words behind where I needed to be today.

Off to run errands with ai731. I’ll have to work tonight after Liam goes to bed, which is generally a bad thing because now that I’m up at six in the morning running around with the boy, my brain dies around seven o’clock in the evening. This can’t become a regular thing.

ESTC Update

Total words, ESTC: 9,993
Total words today: 1,939

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
9,993 / 50,000
(20.0%)

I’ll probably kill some of them in the morning. But for now — yay me. One-fifth of the way there. And when I sit down to write on Wednesday, I’ll hit 10K with the first sentence I type, and there will be more minor celebration.

Now it’s off to pick up the boy from daycare.

Monday Again

I’m tired. That’s pretty much all there is to say about the weekend, apart from the fact that I spent time with very good friends celebrating various things like graduation and moving away and belated housewarmings and spiritual milestones, and now it’s the week again and I didn’t get to rest at all. I deliberately spent this morning away from the computer and wrote longhand in the living room. It was good for my back and my state of mind. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m really tired.

Here’s something of interest for all you author-types who write short novels: the Miami University Press Novella contest.

Submission Rules and Guidelines:

* Winning entry receives $1000 and book publication.
* Postmark by October 15, 2006.
* Reading fee $25, payable to MU Press.
* All entrants receive copy of winning book.
* Submit manuscripts, 40,000 words or less, two title pages, one with author’s name, address and phone number, one without. Author’s name must not appear elsewhere.
* The minimum word count is 60 pages times 300 words or 18,000 words.

Grr

I just spent an hour running around not getting the two things I needed to get. No 16-gauge copper wire with which to bribe tonight’s babysitter. Worst of all, no new CD player for the car. Because, you know, a hundred dollars of hidden costs (above and beyond the extra fifty I’d already budgeted to cover such costs, which makes for one hunded fifty over the actual price of the unit) makes for a very cranky me and a very firm “Forget it” to the salesguy. The extra costs — equipment adaptors, installation, blah blah blah — totalled more than the unit itself, by a couple of dollars.

Cranky. Although the salesguy was kind enough to show me an alternate unit that was fifty dollars less, with all the same features and a longer base warranty, made by an equally reliable company. I didn’t ask for a quote on the extra equipment needed to adapt it to our car, which was dumb, but I was too annoyed to hang around, and certainly too cranky to make a split-second decision. I’ll send HRH in at some point instead and he can ask.

Grr.

Now I go to do a final read and polish on my submissions for the local Neopagan journal. I’m hoping I like them enough to avoid serious rewrites.

Meh

Not such a great day today. I started out ill, got mildly better, but didn’t have the opportunity to sit down to work until after lunch due to a meeting, at which point it was kind of a write-off because an evil, evil migraine had started setting in. And then HRH called, having finished work early at 2:00, so I went to pick him up. When we got home I crashed with lots of Tylenol to nap for an hour. When I woke up the headache was mostly gone.

Our tomatoes are finally beginning to ripen. Best garden yield today, however, are the six sprigs of lavender I picked. They smell wonderfully green and spicy, and are very graceful in the Caithness vase on my desk.

Ice cream tonight! It’s the Children’s Miracle Network fundraiser at Dairy Queen, so we’re having an ice cream date with the upstairs neighbours. Maybe I’ll try to slip in some work afterwards, even if it’s just lying in bed with my notebook and letting my thoughts wander around.