Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 54,644
New words today: 1,600
Carrot count: 4+

Kitchens, shrines and altars, household spirits. (Yes, Prince Bear, there is now an official half-page on brownies, another two pages on brownie-like household spirits from other cultures.)

Despite how negative the day has felt, there was work done, and I’m mildly amazed at it. It’s just been an off day from the moment I woke up. Another album Tina lent me got me through it, Anner Bylsma’s excellent Violoncello of the Seventeenth Century. That and some serious replaying of the live recording of the Tragically Hip’s ‘Highway Girl’ this past half-hour.

The light is so good (about time the sun came out and I can turn off my overhead light) and the Hip are carrying me so well that if I didn’t have dinner to prepare before Sparky and HRH get home I might have continued working, except 55K is coming up quickly and frankly, that’s extremely disconcerting.

A week and a bit left. Four work days, as we’re going to see my parents for Easter. I’ve been thinking ‘two weeks left’ and that’s not true, even if I were staying home. I can’t face this work schedule right now.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 53,044
New words today: 1,503
Carrot count: 2+

Rounding out chapters today. More on oil lamps, mostly kitchen stuff.

I was ‘helped’ by a five-month old ginger kitten who thinks stomping on my keyboard and chasing cursors and pointers is fun. He squished himself behind the monitor at one point and did the meerkat/sock puppet thing, peeking at me over the top. I nearly fell off my chair because I laughed so hard. And then he stuck his head into my glass of iced tea and slurped a good portion of it up before I caught him. The eternal purring began to get to me; at first it was cute, then I got tired of it, now it’s disturbing in its unceasingness. (Incessence?) I had to throw him out at one point and close the door to the office. When I let him back in after my next break he climbed all over the place again before literally falling over in my lap and passing out. I was wondering when that would happen; I knew I remembered kittens playing hard then falling over in a corpse-like slumber. What was amusing was when he woke up, he literally popped his head up, gave a little “Meer!”, then started purring again as he climbed back onto the desk to chase the pointer and appearing text. Cute, but exasperating.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 51,541
New words today: 494
Carrot count: 6+

How’s that for misleading? I deleted five pages and ended up with two pages of new/refocused stuff.

I hate, hate, hate that my productive period begins just around two-forty-five, and then I have to pack everything in at four-fifteen. Hate it. But in those twoish hours I do get a stunning amount of focused work done. I only wish I could get into that headspace at, say, nine-thirty.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 51,047
New words today: 1,015

That may not seem like a lot of movement, but I dipped down to almost 49K after cutting out sections of deadwood. I’m actually moderately stunned at the day’s work. Unfortunately, I’m also mildly hyperventilatory (is that a word? it is now) about the amount of carrots left to pull off.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 50,032
New words today: 1,928

If I had any energy at all I’d make a push for another seventy-ish words to make a 2K yield for the day, but no way. It was hard enough getting the MS past 50K. I wanted to quit before noon.

Have a good weekend, everyone. I’m going to go pass out until I have to rouse myself to make spaghetti sauce.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 48,104
New words today: 2,329

One wonders how much I could have done if I had not crashed and been useless between one-thirty and three-thirty. Stupid blood sugar. Why have you dropped like a stone the past two days when I’ve been feeding you properly?

A basic purification ritual, smudging and making smudge sticks, and incense today.

Am beginning to see 50K looming, and am now quietly panicking about fitting everything in under 60K. I may end up cutting things out. This is not unusual. The problem is deciding what bits I haven’t yet written that are least important and therefore can be excised without impacting the strength and quality of the book.

Argh!

Stet!

No, un-stet!

Stet!

Un-stet!

*headdesk*

Look, squirrel-mind, just take a stand and decide if you’re accepting the global change to make all elements lower-cased, or not. Then do the same with each appearance of the term ‘Mother Goddess’. (I know, I know, that one’s hard, because sometimes it is legitimately ‘Mother Goddess’, and ‘Mother’, and other times it is correctly ‘mother goddess’ and ‘mother’. Just decide which is which and stet/unstet it confidently. Trust yourself.)

Also, good on you for initiating the global change of ‘Neopagan’ to ‘Neo-Pagan’, squirrel-mind. If we had cookies, I would give you one.

Do it, then go cuddle your son and think of something fun to do. Like baking cookies, for example. Then you get your reward as well as entertaining him.