Category Archives: Writing

Time

I slept really well last night, and woke up to discover that it was 6.58 AM, and HRH’s alarm hadn’t gone off. It actually hadn’t not gone off, it was set for the proper time, but when our power went out yesterday morning and I reset the clocks, I remember making sure that I set it to the AM time. Although now I have a nibbling suspicion that when I went back to check it, I reset it again to the opposite of what it was, assuming that I had forgotten to do so in the first place.

All’s well, though; HRH woke up just fine, got ready and left in twenty minutes, plenty of time to pick up his passenger at 7.30. I made tea and brought the Sense & Sensibility Screenplay to bed with me, read it from start to finish, and then Emma Thompson’s simply killing film diaries which follow it. The only film I ever worked on was lots of waiting about and not knowing what was happening next, cutting lines left right and centre, and bagels (don’t ask), with no fun or chumminess at all. When I’d done reading I felt like popping in the Pride & Prejudice DVDs, although that would cut severely into the writing jam this afternoon.

It’s the last writing jam for a while, as most of us are here and there over the summer, and one will be working a six-month contract as of any day now. We ought to come up with goals or schedules and check up on one another anyway. E-mail each other work, and such.

Difficult to remember that I’m flying out to Hamilton on Thursday afternoon. I ought to put neon asterisks around the note on the calendar.

At Last…

Today’s word count: 3,470
Total word count: 80,473

My gods, it was like pulling teeth today, but I did it, damn it. I did it.

And no, I’m not finished; tomorrow will be polishing bits of Chapter 2, and brainstorming more examples for Chapter 11. But I’ve passed my contracted minimum, and there will be nothing new going into the manuscript. I’ll leave it for two days, then reread it on Monday to check finicky things (like have my references to other chapters been consistent?). And then, I think I might just submit it on Tuesday.

This is vaguely surreal. It certainly hasn’t sunk in yet.

New Day

I took yesterday off — I didn’t crack open the laptop or a reference book all day. I severely needed the time away from the manuscript; I think I broke myself on Tuesday. I couldn’t string enough words together to make a coherent sentence yesterday, and it was a bit of an Eeyore day as well.

So I read all of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix instead, and yet again, for the third time, I read it too fast and didn’t allow the story to breathe properly.

Orchestra was okay, not spectacular but okay, and I slept well (although I dreamed of washing one of my Wicca books in Debra’s washing machine, because the pages had begun to go a bit yellow with age). I awoke to HRH sitting on the edge of the bed to say goodbye (yes, he’s putting in a half-day today). We talked politics for about fifteen minutes, then he got up to go to work. “Oh, sure,” I said, “talk sweet politics to me and then just leave.” “Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” he smirked, and off he went.

I so love the fact that my husband can now make literary jokes.

In other news, I sat down to finally reserve my plane ticket to Hamilton, and found to my utter disgust that with taxes and fees etc., the cost of the ticket has doubled. So I’m in the process of checking out the cost of train tickets; I can switch to the GO train in Toronto and meet my parents in Oakville, and it will probably be cheaper. (Update: Yup. Cheaper. Plus I’d get there earlier in the day, and it’s a ten-minute round trip to pick me up instead of an hour.)

I’m bright-eyed and busy-tailed, and I’m determined to write at least two thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven words today.

Official Book Update

Today’s word count: 3,976
Current word total: 77,003

My back hurts, I have lost my ability to spell, and I don’t think I could come up with another original thought today if I tried.

I have under three thousand words left. Part of me is suspicious and believes that this is a dream from which I will wake to discover that reality is very harsh indeed. Another part of me is ridiculously gleeful and pushing to finish as soon as possible, because to hand the manuscript in early would further cement my status as saint with the publishing team.

In the meantime, I’m going to go take a couple of Advil and lie down. I might read something that has no connection to my work whatsoever. I might not. I might just stare at the ceiling and pet a cat. That sounds remarkably attractive.

Hook

Current word count: 75,133

Less than 5K to go!

They just called me and asked if I would write a little invocation to launch the imprint’s sales meeting tomorrow. Nice hook: ties in the New Age thing, the current topic of spells, and gets the sales team in the right mood for the information to follow. How cool is that?

This calls for chocolate.