Category Archives: Diary

Friday Night

I love my boy, who has been going to bed awake after his night-time milk with a book and his bunny, and reading said book to said bunny till he falls asleep. It’s adorable to hear him.

His appetite’s diminished this past week. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not. It happened pretty suddenly, and I suspect it’s teething-associated. He was a voracious little guy, so this new lack of interest in food is a bit disconcerting. I just make sure he has a lot to snack on now and again. Maybe he’s simply too taken up with the whole walking thing. He’s spending fifty percent of his time walking, and the remaining fifty still crawling now. Every day he does a little more.

The heat’s back up, with humidex too, so naturally I’m making soup tonight. Leek and potato, all from the local farm produce we get in weekly baskets. Mmmm. As Scarlet mentioned we’re getting mostly odd lettuces and greeny things, which are okay but tend to not get used as much as the real veggies in these weekly food deliveries. I was hoping for more useful stuff. We just don’t eat enough lettuce-type stuff to make this worthwhile. We’ll see how things shift as the later harvests start kicking in; maybe it will be worth doing again next year.

Okay. I think it’s time for a glass of wine to toast Karine’s birthday in absentia. Our insurance agent ended up calling this afternoon to make an appointment for this evening, and since both HRH and I needed to sign the forms we couldn’t go out to Karine’s birthday pub night. And I have to go chop more leeks, and puree potatoes. (And I thought my pureeing days were over!)

ESTC Update

Total words, ESTC: 12,974
Total words today: 1,415

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
12,974 / 50,000
(25.9%)

And in the space of three thousand words, we go from being a fifth done to a quarter done.

Yay me. Now: chicken wings. Or laundry, then chicken wings. And book.

Breaking The Universe

I am fairly certain that I am confusing a goodly portion of the universe by ordering pregnancy books. In fact, more pregnancy books are due to arrive here over the next couple of weeks than I ordered when I was pregnant.

This amuses me.

In other news, when the postman rang the bell to hand me a parcel today, Cricket came a-running, warbling her hopes. “Did the boy cats I ordered arrive? Are those the boy cats? Please give me the boy cats!”

I petted her, told her that no, there were no boy cats, and she wandered sadly off to curl up in the laundry basket again. Every now and again she gives a mournful little mew, the kitten equivalent of a doleful sigh.

I am mildly bewildered as to the order in which these books are arriving, however. I ordered four from the same store, and the one that just got here was the last to be shipped out. In fact, when I placed the order it was out of stock, and I was warned that it take three to four weeks to be sent to me. And it’s here first. The books that were in stock that shipped the day before this one are nowhere to be seen yet; they probably won’t arrive till Monday. Everything ships from the same warehouse; everything is coming by the same method. I do not understand our postal system in the least.

Ah, well, I now have one of the books I needed for research, and I’m about a hundred words away from the daily quota, so I think I’ll heat up the chicken wings that are in the fridge and settle down with a highlighter and some sticky notes.

ESTC Update

Total words, ESTC: 11,553
Total words today: 1,565

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
11,553 / 50,000
(23.1%)

See? I just have to open a file, decide what topic I’m going to work on that isn’t research-dependent (tonight it was journaling), and go. Well, that and take The Tragically Hip out of my playlist rotation. And switch off the router so that I can’t go online, and so the whine cuts out. I never really notice how insidious the whine of the router is until I turn it off, and then I wonder how I can concentrate on anything with it going.

Just to make a point to myself, I worked out some numbers as I calculated this evening’s word count. Turns out I’m already ahead of this week’s must-be-at-this-total-by-the-end-of-Friday-to-be-on-schedule word count. Every little bit over the daily word quota helps. And my natural need to push the envelope to give myself breathing room means that I automatically artificially inflate the daily quota. I am so good at doing this that I have been firmly misremembering the daily quota as being 1,300 instead of 1,200. So with my (misremembered) daily quota being 1,300, I’ve been unofficially aiming for a minimum 1,500 each day in order to create a safety net. That’s 300 words over my actual quota. Three days of that and I’m almost 1K ahead of the game. And that’s assuming I don’t fly past my quota mark, which usually happens.

There’s a lot more going on than quantity, of course. What I’m writing is important. I don’t like to put it down unless it sounds decent. It’s just that publishers like tidy numbers when you hand everything in, and aiming for the general figure they’ve asked for or you’ve pitched helps you grasp how much room you have to fill and move around in. The wordmeter is an artifical judge of how complete a work is. But it shows you how many miles there are to go, even if it doesn’t show you how to get there. The earlier I finish the rough draft, the sooner I can polish it.

Liam Update

Liam graduated to a booster seat last night, and ate at the table.

Check out that fork action! (Thank you for lending us the booster seat, Uncle Jeff, Auntie Paze, and Devon!)

Yesterday we also went out and got him new shoes, as his 12 to 18 mos Robeez and size four sandals were just too small for his chunky little feet. We got the next size up of Robeez (18 to 24 mos, yikes) because everything else had a sole an inch thick that wouldn’t bend, or cost too much. I won’t spend seventy-nine dollars for a pair of leather toddler shoes, no matter how well-made they are. I don’t even spend that kind of money on my shoes, thank you very much. I mean, good grief — that’s a week’s worth of groceries. We’ll hit the used kid-stuff store when we go down to visit my parents in two weeks and find a pair of softer lace-ups for him that won’t break the bank.

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.