Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Head Down

Still working furiously. I’m on deadline for a freelance manuscript evaluation today, and now have Bonus Copyedits For The Hearthcraft Book, Due Next Monday!

Yes, my life is exciting. And heavily scheduled. At least I’ve been writing Orchestrated longhand in bed at night. I’ll log my daily word counts when I transcribe them. And my editor sent me the hearthcraft CEM with a note saying that there weren’t many queries to address in the MS, and that the copyeditor said I did a good job. I love hearing that, because damn it, I try hard to turn in a clean product. And it may be my overly OCD work ethic, but I am continually staggered by the number of manuscripts I see turned in by authors who have not spell-checked them or given them a glance to make sure that, oh, the the text is all in the same font and the font size is consistent, and that there are no spacing inconsistencies or margins that jump back and forth. (I am serious.) One of the most important rules in publishing is Make It Look Professional And You’ll Be More Likely To Be Taken Seriously. (Yes, if the content is good enough you will be [mostly] forgiven, but making it easy to see how brilliant the content is makes the content look even more brilliant. Trust me.)

Right. Now that correspondence and news have been done, it’s off to work on the iBook in the living room. Once I’ve handed it in this afternoon I can bill for this month’s work. Hurrah!

Orchestrated Update

Orchestrated:
New words today: 2,635
Total word count, Orchestrated: 46,226

And here’s where the outline kind of breaks down, because I’ve covered the two things supposed to happen in this chapter and there’s only four or five pages. Each chapter covers one month, though, so I can’t just skip to the next chapter. Hurrah for character development and exploring relationships and Talking About The Mistake The Protagonist Made A Few Chapters Back and What She Has Learned From It.

I didn’t think I’d get anything done today, because I had to work on a freelance evaluation. It was done by two-thirty, though, and the second one that arrived in my inbox yesterday (argh!) is very short and isn’t due till next Tuesday, so I have time in which to spread things out nicely. I was worried I’d have to devote this whole week to freelance and lose all my momentum on my own work. Not to be the case, oh joy!

To my deep stun, I have written 17,695 new words in Orchestrated this month so far. I’m really pushing to get it finished by the end of the month so I can work on my list of agents to query with the as-of-yet-unwritten query letter next month. (At least I have my two-paragraph synopsis for the letter!)

Orchestra tonight. Not in the headspace.

Friday!

Not that my weeks are such that Fridays are any better or worse than the other days, but old habits die hard.

Cello lesson went well. I’m definitely getting a handle on the bow hold, and on how the weight of the bow arm evolves as the bow is drawn across the string in order to maintain an even sound with the same power at the tip as at the frog. Now we’re finessing the elbow leading thing, and left-hand finger movement within the same position as well as properly shifting from first (and second and third and fourth) to fifth. (Because of the body of the cello being in the way, you see. Here is a classic example of How Things Will Be Easier With A 7/8.) And either my teacher is being extremely enthusiastic in order to be encouraging and supportive, or I’m genuinely making progress. I’ll assume the latter and be happy, as there have only been three lessons so far.

There was no traffic on the way home. None. Zero. Either there was some sort of holiday I’m unaware of, or everything was just going right. I ended up not taking the 13 sud, as when I took it north at 3:30 the lines to access the 13 from the 40 est were backed up halfway to blvd. des Sources, and it would only get worse as rush hour progressed. I ended up taking des Sources sud to the 20 and there wasn’t even a slowdown where the 13 sud joins it. Mysterious.

The barbecue pulled pork was a huge success last night, so huge that I would seriously be considering doing it again tonight if it wasn’t pizza night. And I love my homemade pizza with much love.

So overall it was as good a day as the previous Thursday had been horrible. Very nice indeed.

Today: More writing. What else? This is what work means. I’m taking a couple of weeks off from the freelance evaluation thing; I need to recover and get some serious progress made on my own stuff.

ETA: Spoke too soon; an assignment just landed in my inbox. It’s a second evaluation for a new draft of a manuscript I evaluated earlier this summer, and the first draft was decent, so it shouldn’t be too harrowing.

Gah! Done!

It took way, way, way too long to finish up today. I started working at 7:40 AM and spent most of the morning on the iBook in the living room. Once I moved in here to handle polishing the review things fell apart. I don’t like this not-able-to-work-in-my-office trend. It’s bad. I suspect if I’d stayed in the living room I’d have focused better.

Anyway, it’s four, and I’m exhausted so I’m not even going to contemplate working on Orchestrated. I need to fall over with a book. Nixie has been at me to be elsewhere too, placing herself like a little black statue on my desk between my keyboard tray and the monitor, purring at me; every once in a while she’s reached out a tiny black paw with the claws ever so slightly extended, patting my hands or my sweater sleeves, coaxing me to stroke her.

Mailboy joy today included two of the Scrabble tile pendants I bought last week (super fast shipping!), which are even lovelier in person (I will buy brown velvet ribbon on which to string them when I am racing all over creation tomorrow), and the new issue of Strings. Let’s hope this one is better than the last one. I will read that, and finish Justine Larbalestier’s How to Ditch Your Fairy.

Orchestra tonight. And I have no idea what to do for dinner.

Work-Avoiding

It is really so very hard to do these evaluations when the manuscripts are awful. I have to couch things in diplomatic terms and come up with suggestions of how to improve it. It takes at least twice as long on a bad one as a good one takes. Fortunately I get two or three good ones for every awful one. I told Ceri I was work-avoiding yesterday, and she said, “So I take it This manuscript doesn’t need an editor, it needs a paper shredder is right out as a commentary?” That’s kind of where things are at right now.

I have finished the basic review; now I have to go through it and make sure my formatting is correct and I’ve said nice things before I say mean things. Diplomatically. Ugh.

To give myself breaks from it throughout the day, I have baked maple walnut muffins (note to self: when you make them half the size, reduce baking time accordingly, you idiot) (but it’s all right, Liam won’t care if they’re a bit crunchy; he’s a sweetheart that way), I have done laundry, I have eaten lunch. Now to the final step of polishing the review and sending it off. It has to be out of my hands by the end of the work day or I will go mad.

Ye gods, orchestra tonight. I should kill this headache that is spawning in my lower skull in plenty of time.