Monthly Archives: July 2006

Liam Update

Today he cut not one but both upper one-year molars.

No wonder it’s been so painful for everyone around here over the past ten days. And today was a special sort of insane. I discovered the first one in the top right gum around lunch. Then jteethy came to pick us up in order to whisk us over to share the afternoon with him and Paze (thank you thank you thank you for the change in scenery and company!), and I discovered the second one on the other side. It literally came through an hour later.

Brave little guy. There have been lots of tears and hugs today, in amongst the screaming and blissful unconsciousness imposed upon him by the car as we took a long, long drive along the Lakeshore. Lots of growing accomplished.

The other big news of the day: We set up the car seat to face forward. He’s definitely a big boy, what with molars and sitting so that he can look in the direction we’re headed like the adults do, and eating Popsicles like he did on Sunday (very fun, even though he kept trying to hold the cold ice part instead of the stick and dropping it because it was, well, cold) and grilled cheese sandwiches too (first one yesterday — it’s cheese! and toast! awesome!).

Words Words Words — Really Big Ones

This is spectacular:

The city of Montreal is about to adorn its streets with some literary graffiti.

Starting in September, the words of 10 Montreal writers will be painted on buildings, billboards and brick walls around town.

Lines from famous Montrealers such as Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Michel Tremblay and Monique Proulx will go up in places where the public can read them.

Full story here.

Bliss

I am in complete and total gourmand heaven. Rajura introduced me to Juliette et Chocolat today at lunch, a creperie and chocolaterie on St-Denis street. My tomato-mushroom-Gruyere crepe was perfect, and the mi-amer chocolat noir to drink was literally like drinking thick, smooth, liquid chocolate. It took forever to pour into my cup!

We talked and talked and talked, and would probably still be there if I hadn’t realised that I had to get back to the public lot at the metro station to reclaim my car before my parking pass ran out. I made a quick stop at Archambault to pick up a CD but they didn’t have it. They did, however, have a big promotional display of francophone Quebecois(e) artists who record under the Tacca label, so I got the only Jorane CD I was missing for ten dollars. A good buy, and really what I was in the mood for, I discover now as I listen to it.

Now I’m going to log off and unplug the computer because we are having a delightful thunderstorm. Good thing the book’s at a point where I can work things out in my notebook.

In Which She Does Math And Is Pleased With The Result

I’ve worked it out.

To meet deadline, I have to write 3,500 words per week. If I only work three days a week (also known as the days Liam is at daycare or with his grandma), that’s a quota of 1,200 words on each work day.

(Anyone familiar with my average output laughing yet?)

Breaking down the estimated word count, it works out to around twenty pages or 5,000 words per chapter, although that’s always flexible. After all, this is just me taking the estimated length and dividing by the number of chapters I’ve sketched out. There’s about three thousand unassigned words left over that I’m leaving free, since I have a bad habit of creating monster chapters that must commit mitosis in order to maintain thematic unity and to allow the poor reader to (a) take a break, and (b) think straight. I always worry about making the target MS length, and I shouldn’t because every time I create an overabundance of material and end up having to trim it down. And when I get the CEM back for rewrites I’m always asked to expand certain ideas, which also produces more word count. It looks like this time, I may have to worry about keeping the MS below target length from the very beginning! For example, there are lots and lots of rituals in this book. And spell-type things, and meditations. And some lists. These always take up more room than I expect them to. I’ve given myself plenty of time in which to do it all, as well.

Focus, focus, focus. That’s still the key.

My table of contents is finished. I think I’m going to open a new file, name it by the book title, and start throwing ideas down because they’re coming thick and fast. And at some point I’m going to call for questions and ideas from all of you as well. (Well, those of you associated with the topic, anyhow.)

Good News: She’s Back

The series for which I helped develop the proposal has been accepted. (This means I get a small finder’s fee of sorts, a pleasant thing.)

My own proposal for one of the books within that series has also been accepted. I got the offer today. Shorter book, definitely less money, but it’s a subject I really want to write about, so I’m taking it. (There’s an art budget! Woo!)

And the other book I was asked to write has been scheduled for after this series book, so I can pick that one up after this one is written.

I’m back. Oh, I am so back. And this after five different people asked me over the weekend how the writing was going, to which I could only reply that it hasn’t been going at all, plain and simple. Full-time mom, can’t work. But with part-time daycare, and a contract…

Oh yes. I’m back.

And in a nice symmetry, it was a year ago tomorrow that I delivered the green witch book. I’ve had almost exactly a year off from professional writing. (Slogging through the copyedits and rewrites don’t count here; I mean the actual coming up with stuff and putting it on a blank page for the first time.)

Now I have to go work out a writing schedule with quotas and so forth, write that table of contents, and expand my outline so that I have a good solid skeleton with which to work.

Oh Look, Ten A.M. And My Patience Is Non-Existent

This is already a bad, bad day.

It started yesterday afternoon with me feeling ill. This morning, still ill, I’m running into scheduling problems as well. As a result I have zero patience and am very close to throwing all my scheduled activities into other people’s faces and telling them to handle everything, because I’m really tired of being the one who co-ordinates.

It doesn’t help that the only thing I got done on my list of things to do yesterday afternoon was the cello. I worked for almost two hours straight on three different songs, which is a good thing because I wanted to finalise a couple of bits I’d been developing and some of it sounds beautiful, but not so good in that it’s the only thing I ended up doing. Also in that a disproportionate amount of time was spent trying to fix something that seemed broken, thanks to a tabber’s idiocy in not correctly identifying the source of the tab I was using as a basis for constructing a bassline.

On the good side of things, however, Liam had another awesome day at daycare yesterday. This time he got to play with two other children, a boy only a couple of months older than he is and a girl of four and a half. This was very okay in his books, as he likes to watch older children playing. He’s going to get more of it today, because we’re headed over to the ADZO homestead so that HRH can indulge in some well-earned playtime with the guys, and thus Liam and I get to play with other mummies and babies. And he’ll get a bit of it tomorrow before he goes to bed as well, because there are children coming to the neighbours’ housewarming.