Category Archives: Diary

Back Into The Swing

Today I felt like I was racing to get nowhere. I hate those kind of days.

I spent the last three hours working, yes, honest to goodness working. I updated that proposal and sent it off (according to my notes I last submitted it in August of 2004 — yikes), and tried to write two more.

And wow, did it ever hurt. I’m so out of practice. Even looking at my old ones, I floundered for ideas and wrote in a stilted, rusty, hollow-sounding fashion instead of the exciting and dynamic style required. A proposal is part outline, part marketing selling tool, and the marketing bit has totally flown away from me over the past two years. My brain hurt (no, really, I needed to take Tylenol), and I wasn’t looking forward to orchestra.

Imagine my surprise when I was called at six to be told that orchestra was cancelled, as our rehearsal venue is unavailable and no one told us ahead of time. This is bad, because we only have a few rehearsals left before July 1, but also a relief, because as a result of struggling with proposals I’m nowhere near the headspace orchestra requires. So because I didn’t get a chance to go out and pick up a few things this afternoon (the proposals took twice as long as I’d expected them to — ah, optimism), I’m heading out now instead.

Birthday-Associated Fun

1) Liam has a swingset, as of this past Sunday. He helped his grandpa and HRH put it together. Pictures to follow when I get around to it.

2) Liam has a sandbox, as of yesterday. Naturally, he is very interested in eating the sand, much more so than playing with his sand toys.

3) Liam has a seventh tooth, as of this morning. Finally, one of the four that have been lurking and being general pains over the past six weeks has made an appearance, and it’s about time. He also got his first pair of sandals today.

ETA: Okay, I got around to the pictures.

Liam supervises the final touches on the swingset:

Liam’s first time in the sandbox:

Swan Sister Update

Today was the first day in the new writing schedule, and look:

Total word count, Swan Sister: 8,771
Total words today: 853

I started to write at 8:20. Liam woke up at 9:00, effectively ending the session. But before I stopped I’d managed to successfully kill off the title character, as set forth in my outline. So that’s the proposal done, and the death done. I can check two major things off my list, and the story can continue to advance. I’m really settling into the style more comfortably too, which is a relief after having it dissolve through the typed words like mist whenever I thought I’d hit it.

Mind you, today’s success may have had something to do with how long I was awake before I sat down to write. I woke up at 5:30 AM, thanks to a wretched cold that has ambushed me and taken my sinuses and my throat hostage. So I was very awake, and had been for some time, and had had time to think about how to handle the scene (plus draw a map to clear up what was where, which had to be done as well). We’ll see if it all still works when I sleep in till sevenish like I usually do.

But establishing a writing schedule again is a Good Thing, not just for my creative sanity but because it looks like I’m dusting off and rewriting the old spellcrafting through the seasons proposal that was “nice but not now” when I originally did it a couple of years back, as well as drawing up an idea for a series (not all by me, of course, but I’d like to do one title for it). It’s so very nice to be asked, “What do you feel like writing?”

Telephony

So.

I had a business meeting by phone scheduled for this morning. A meeting that I’ve been waiting for for some time now.

The phone rings. I pick it up. “Hi, it’s –”

And the phones cuts out.

I am not ashamed to say I threw the phone, I was so mad at it. (I threw it at something soft, and took the time to turn so that I aimed properly, but I threw it.)

I’m on my way out to buy (a) a replacement battery for the damn thing, and (b) a real phone with a cord that actually works to serve as backup.

It’s six years old. It’s done its time, both on the cradle and off. And it’s been sending us feeble “I don’t feel well” signals lately. But dying as soon as it’s taken off the cradle? Swan song.

UPDATE, 12:40 PM: New battery now charging. The salesman was surprised our battery lasted six years; he said they have a life of approximately three years. But the cord phone I bought? Only has a USB plug. Has to be exchanged for a Real Phone so I can actually use the damn thing as a backup phone on the main phone line, because of course there aren’t USB to phone jack adaptors that don’t cost more than the ruddy phone did. So it’s back out to the shops after Liam’s nap, so that we actually have a phone we can use before tomorrow.

::headdesk::

Swan Sister Update

How long has it been since I’ve posted a book update? Long enough that I’m practically turning somersaults as I write this.

Total word count, Swan Sister: 7,911
Total words today: 3,071

I love Mousme with much love, for having her here while I wrote meant that I dragged my clunky little laptop out of the closet instead of working with the desktop, recopied my files to a second floppy that worked in the laptop, and wrote all day instead of fiddling around on the internet or with photo files or music or other shiny things that distract me.

It was Liam’s day at his grandma’s, and I deliberately planned a writing jam so that I couldn’t do anything else but write — no errands, no naps, no kicking about. I wrote/thought about/planned/discussed the novel all day. Between elevenish and fiveish I was a writer again, even during the breaks for food and discussion and phone calls and visitors. And ye gods, it worked. I almost doubled my existing word count. I wrote the proposal scene that I couldn’t write until I had at least two straight hours to handle it, and now things are moving in the story. I now have writing momentum, too. I want to keep going.

All I needed was an uninterrupted day doing it and the discipline of someone with me to get that scene written in its entirety. Now I think I can count on the hourish nap Liam has in the early morning to keep writing this book scene by scene. Instead of doing the correspondence/newsreading thing when I turn the computer on, I’ll write as much as I can for as long as his nap lasts, and I’ll handle e-mail and such during his second shorter nap. I will unplug the modem so that I can’t just hop online and lose half an hour. I may go back to writing on the laptop in another room, if that’s what gets the job done. It doesn’t matter how slow the laptop is if it’s not used for anything except word processing. The smaller regular keyboard is a bit hard to use after using the ergonomic board exclusively for a few years, but it’s a challenge I can handle.

Today has been such a blessing, and such a gift.

Although, I’d forgotten how much tea I go through during a writing jam. I haven’t had this much caffeine running through my body in almost two years.

Yay

The car is well again, hurrah! It was more than we’d expected, mainly because the part that needed replacing was not the part we thought needed to be replaced, but it was not as bad as it could have been. Or ought to have been, either, because HRH gets along famously with the mechanic, and so was not charged for labour. Let’s hear it for gregariousness. (Gregariousity?)