Category Archives: Diary

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.

Today, Briefly

I would like to state for the record that my new cello pickup is teh awesome. There is zero loss of sound quality between the actual string vibrating and the amp output. Zero. I didn’t think that was possible. It’s worth every single penny. (Plus I finally get to use the patch cord I bought a year and a half ago.)

Also, band practice was excellent.

Liam’s new word today: “bubble”, said while watching his bath fill. This led to the phrase “bubble bath” directly afterwards as he put two and two together. He proceeded to eat a handful of them, then generously fed me a handful too, because he is all about the sharing.

I’m wrong; there were two new words. The other was “balloon”, because one was given to him by a server at the breakfast place we went to this morning. No, three: he said “soon”, too. Yes, the new words are coming thick and fast these days.

Poor kid, his teeth are driving him round the bend.The upper left incisor is now threatening to break the gum any moment. We can’t get our fingers near the lower set without being bitten with great and frustrated force, so we have no idea how close those two are. I picked up more infant Tylenol today on the way home, for everyone’s relief.

Now I’m going to go read Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon in bed, because I have only one-third of the book left and it is good enough to be finished in a third sitting. It’s been sitting on my to-read pile since it was released, and I’m partially upset about having failed to read it before now and partially glad that I didn’t, because it’s perfect for what I want to be reading this week. (Also, as much as I adore Neil Gaiman’s writing, Fragile Things is not exactly relaxing bedtime reading because most of the stories hinge on slightly odd and/or creepy twists at the end that get odder and creepier the more you think about them.)

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.

Carrots

I began editing down and rearranging Chapter 8 of ESTC today. I took things out and added other things in, and I’ve got pretty much the same amount of words that I began with. More carrots, though, so that’s an improvement. (Carrots are the new measurement of how close to being finished a piece of writing is, after a discussion among friends of how inadequate word count alone is at reflecting completion started by Ceri. More carrots mean the piece is closer to being complete, including thinking and research and polishing and so forth.) Alas, carrots do not render down to a neat little summary the way word count does. So this paragraph will have to do to satisfy posterity.

I left Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro to percolate for a few days, and went back to it tonight. This is still at the stage where word count reflects progress, because it’s about getting the story down in words, and so:

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 27,423
Total words today: 2,312

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m aiming for this to be around 60K words long, 70K max, as it’s a YA historical. So it’s roughly about a third of the way there. Not a third of the way done in terms of carrots, however, only word count. Although most of the broad planning for this novella is done, I won’t know how many carrots there are until the first draft is finished. Or I may have a better idea where things stand carrot-wise once I’ve written this second major part of the story, as the third part will be the aftermath.

All in all, a very good day.

Concert Recap

After every concert we put on, I want to come home and journal about how this was The Best Concert Ever! And what that says to me is that I (a) enjoy them, (b) feel confident about our capabilities, and (c) the concerts go really really well, (d) the presence of an audience adds that extra edge, and (e) the concerts are fun. And evidently the audiences agree with me, because they keep coming back.

Last night was excellent. I’ll be riding the high for quite some time.

For my part, I was concerned about my performance in the Beethoven. September and October were horribly busy months, where I couldn’t practice as I wanted to practice (which quickly became the way I needed to practice), and trying to catch up in November proved extremely difficult. I’m proud to say I pulled it off: I didn’t savage the really difficult bits, only twice fell apart and stopped playing altogether for a bar or two, and nailed some of the stuff that had been really stonewalling me. The entire orchestra melded into a seamless Beethoven-playing machine, and achieved some sort of para-Beethoven performance that even we didn’t anticipate. Not that we expected it to go badly; it’s just that we’d never played it quite like that before. Everything else on the programme went smoothly as well, but the Beethoven simply overshadowed it all.

Also, my debut as a triangle player was a triumph.

The house was about three-quarters full, which was very gratifying because there’s nothing worse for a performer than to look out into the audience and behold a sea of empty seats: it’s demoralizing. And in the end, three people who I hadn’t been expecting showed up as well as the three I knew would be there. Thank you t!, Jan, MLG, Jeff, Paze, and HRH; your presence meant a lot to me. (Plus you got to enjoy some really, really fine music.) And I appreciate all the well-wishes for our season opener left in form of journal comments and phone and e-mail messages from those who couldn’t make it, too.

And I discovered that having a dress rehearsal the morning of the concert date itself does dreadful things to my sense of time and the day’s schedule. I’m thankful that this was an exception to the rule.

Next up: the first section of the Messiah!

Psyched

This concert is going to rock. I also have a percussion solo, or more correctly, I play when everyone else is playing but I play the only example of a particular percussive instrument in this concert. (Yes, I play the cello. Apparently I also have a secret identity. Don’t worry, Mousme, your job is safe.)

My only regret about the day is not being able to share the fun over at the ADZO household this afternoon, because I really, really could have gone for a relaxing family birthday thing with good friends. (Well, I also regret not being able to go to band practice today to test out my new cello pickup, but that can happen next weekend.)

The concert is at 19h30 tonight, folks, and the location and directions and particulars can be found here. It’s public, and the more the merrier!

The General Novemberity Wearing Me Down

Matthew Cheney made me laugh today.

If you write about the weather, use as many adjectives as you can, or else your nouns will wilt and become adverbs.

Some coaches insist adverbs are stronger than nouns, but an independent panel of statisticians has proved otherwise. Despite appearances, though, statisticians don’t like nouns so much as they adore conjunctions.

The whole list of deliberately obtuse writing rules can be found here. And I found them via Justine.

Liam had a terrifying asthma attack late Wednesday night, triggered by a coughing fit in bed. The coughs compounded, and his bronchial tubes constricted, and then he started crying because he was upset and scared, and the whole thing just snowballed and got worse and worse. We finally got a shot of his inhaler contents into him after a struggle, which was surprising on its own because he usually loves his little mask, but he was having so much trouble breathing because he was coughing and crying that he wouldn’t let us put the mask up to his face. It took a while to get him to calm down enough to even give him a single breath of the medication, and then he still sounded awful all night. I lay awake all night listening to him over the monitor, and dealt with anxiety attacks the likes of which I haven’t had in about eight years, sourced only partially by the worry about the decision to not take him to the hospital. I hate this time of year. It’s wet, and damp, and there isn’t enough sunlight, and this year seems worse than others, somehow. I got quite ill the next morning, which didn’t help. HRH stayed home because neither Liam nor I were going to be able to handle the day otherwise, neither of us being very user-friendly or even available at times. I felt much better by the end of the afternoon. And I even made cookies, lovely excellent cookies from a newly tweaked recipe, which very closely resemble cookies from a long-gone bakery I used to visit now and again. (Basic shortbread ingredients and proprotions, being sure to use icing sugar instead of granulated, add one egg, plus loads of chocolate chips; chill for two hours; roll and bake. Once the fuses in the oven have been replaced, that is. You mightn’t need to do that last bit.)

But I had a wonderful, wonderful night of sleep last night, and a lovely outing this morning. I was dropped off at daycare with Liam and spent some time playing with him, his caregiver, and one of the other kids. I’ve missed this, since HRH has taken over the boy-chauffeuring job. I got to see Liam open the rabbit’s cage and lean in gently to kiss him, and Boo reach his fuzzy little nose up to kiss him gently back, several times. It was exquisitely cute, and did wonders to soothe the soul of Novemberity/sick/bad sleep ravages. Then I took the metro back and walked to the mall, picked up some sweaters for me and new PJs for the boy, and bussed home. The weather may be overcast but it’s so lovely and warm. It was a good day for an outing.

Since I’ve had the whole day to myself on Liam’s daycare days I’ve been trying to work as soon as he leaves, and this week has proven to me that I shouldn’t even sit down at the computer until after lunch. If I do, then the morning gets wasted anyhow, and I feel upset because I haven’t accomplished any work and half the day is gone. Well, at least I gave it a chance. From now on, the morning is for music and reading and walks. The afternoon is for work. If that’s how my brain has to separate things, then that’s how it’s going to happen. I get exactly the same amount of work done if I sit here for eight hours or three, so why force myself to be here for those first five if I can put them to other practical use?

Now I have web work to do.