Daily Archives: February 18, 2003

In Which Her Productivity Surprises Her

I’ve been experiencing a severe backlash against the amount of hours I’ve been putting in at the computer this past month, which is probably one of the reasons why the most energetic thing I can do is lie on the chesterfield with cats.

This afternoon, I decided to make myself work on the Great Canadian Novel. In a mood like this, writing for myself rather than for someone else means I’m operating under guilt as opposed to an irrational sense of resentment.

I not only reached my daily quota of 2,000 words in only one hour, I surpassed it by 600 words. Then I edited for a while, and cut and pasted all my various chapters into one file, as I had done with my NaNo novel.

To my astonishment, once I’d standardised body text size, I discovered that I had 127 pages and 50, 557 words.

50K is a magic number now. To know that I surpassed it – even over a period of months – means something special. I am quite chuffed. Not only that, I feel like I’m getting somewhere. After a month-long block, I’ve given my protagonist a new direction and new resolve, not to mention producing half a chapter.

Maybe there’s hope for me as an author yet.

Twilight Zone Wednesdays

Sigh.

I’m starting to doubt my sanity. Person after person has asked me if I’m preparing for a book discussion being held on Wednesday night.

It’s nice to be loved. However, I’ve been doing something every Wednesday night for almost two years now. It’s that thing called orchestra. “Nope,” I say when invited to Wednesday events, “no can do – that music thing, you know.”

Except now I’m beginning to feel vaguely Twilight Zone-like. Maybe dimensions have warped, and timelines have crossed, and in this timeline, my orchestra never existed, which would explain why I’m the only one who remembers it.

I’d be more worried if I wasn’t working on a press release announcing the orchestra’s new conductor, and receiving regular e-mails and calls about it. So orchestra exists in at least some other minds.

It’s rather amusing, actually. Maybe aliens have descended and have wiped selected memory banks. Or maybe I should just be more vocal about my extracurricular activities. You know – share openly with confident, voluable enthusiasm. Enough of this self-effacing shyness! I’m a cellist with the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra, and we rehearse every Wednesday night!

Surprised?

Never mind.

Semi-Random Neural Firings:

1. We’re moving March 1. Yay us! Big, bright, mock fireplace, built-in china cabinet in the dining room with leaded glass doors, and a claw-foot bathtub. I’m in heaven. And after only a couple of hiccoughs, it’s ours. We sign the lease tonight. Woo!

2. It sucks to be stuck in the middle of a family power struggle. Especially when it’s somebody else’s family, no relation to you whatsoever, and when you’re (a) a pawn, and (b) a casualty. So long, landlord.

3. I appear to be officially hibernating. I’m so tired of winter. All I can manage to do these days is curl up under the afghan with a pile of cats, and space out.

4. Sleep? What is sleep? We do not understand the concept of sleep.

5. Food is hard to think about, let alone swallow. Tums are my new best friend. Yay, minty Tums! Rich in calcium, too. I seem to remember reading something recently about Tums being bad for you in large quantities, but one a day is not going to kill me. Anything that settles my eternally nauseous stomach must have possess some intrinsic good.

6. Thirty-one days till spring!