…is happening.
I am only posting this to show off the shiny new made-for-me icon that Curtana whipped off for me, at a request made only two hours ago. She is a very talented lady and is to be applauded. Yay her!
Monthly Archives: March 2008
This Is Me, Actually Working
A thousand words before lunch. Well, before noon, anyway; I had leftover homemade pizza around eleven this morning.
This is a Good Start to a Good Day. Even if it all goes downhill from here, I have a thousand new words.
I worked one fifteen-minute set, then went directly into another timed quarter-hour because I didn’t want to lose my train of thought. The I took a break to put a load of laundry in, worked through the third official timed quarter-hour, and kept going when it ended to finish up the section. Fifteen minute blocks are easy. Ten minutes is too short, a half-hour is too long, but fifteen minutes… Why didn’t I start doing this ages ago?
Hearthcraft Book Update
Total word count, hearthcraft book: 45,775
New words today: 1,909
Terms, techniques, recipes. Made pizza dough for tonight, cut a third off to make focaccia as a snack for myself, devoured it all except for one wee wedge, realized that focaccia is hearth-bread, and added a recipe for it because really, how perfect is that?
Best tyop of the day: “Ficus on the goal”.
Today, as part of my plan (a) to not panic and (b) increase self-discipline so things would actually get done (oh, and (c) not burn myself out) I wrote in timed fifteen-minute periods, giving myself a break between each of them. On those breaks, which were often fifteen minutes themselves, I made tea, lunch, a snack, or checked mail and poked around the Internet. It worked very, very well because not only did I control my break time, I could see how much writing I actually got done in fifteen minutes without distraction.
In a somewhat unrelated aside, now that I’m wearing my glasses pretty much all the time, when I don’t wear them my eyes hurt.
I think I’m okay as regards the whole ‘ack this isn’t a BOOK yet’/’how am I going to fit everything in’ issue. If I finish smoothing out what I’ve got (i.e. make real sentences and link them) and write the missing bits, compose the blessings and rituals, and DON’T GET SIDETRACKED BY SHINY NEW IDEAS, everything should just about come in at 60K as a tidy parcel.
And because it was work-avoiding last Friday while I should have been working on the copy-edits of the pregnancy book, I didn’t formally record the progress made in the hearthcraft book. So here, for the sake of complete record-keeping:
New words February 29: 817
New total: 43,866
Bright Sides
I am trying to be thankful that this storm has given us a dozen centimetres of ice pellets so far instead of the skating rinks other areas have received. Except I just got home after dropping the boy at the caregiver’s and HRH at the metro, then doing a brief stop in at the grocery store for essentials, and after trying to drive through the gales of wind and the accumulated ice pellets that behave like wet sand, it’s moderately difficult to be thankful. Particularly when winter just keeps on going. (Lying groundhogs — the Canadian ones said spring would be early. Can one sue a rodent?)
There is almost no one on the roads, and the grocery store was deserted. That’s good, I suppose.
I was going to write an open letter to winter, but Mousme beat me to it and did it better than I could have done, too. It’s more succinct, and certainly more polite. Oh look; it’s now snowing big fluffy Christmas flakes out there. Whatever; I just don’t want it to turn into freezing rain.
To work! I’ve had to reschedule the topic I was going to work on today, after discovering last night that the two books I was intending to use for reference were useless. I shall move on to one I was less mentally prepared to write.
Milestone!
My first rejection letter! Yes, the YA novel I sent out at the end of December did not succeed in its mad quest. I’m actually quite amused that I opened it, read the form rejection, and thought “Yay, this is the first rejection letter I have ever received!” It was indeed a mad shot in the dark, and now I will settle down and sensibly query agents.
Saw the doctor this morning; all is well regarding deeper sleep and pain levels, and my current prescription has been confirmed for the next six months. I am, in fact, at liberty to double my dose if I so require, and to call it into the office so they can put a note in my file. Hurrah for doctors who trust you to know your own pain levels! She also approved of the supplements I’d researched and begun taking on my own for various aspects of the complex, and told me that the recommended Vitamin D intake for North Americans has been revised from 400 IU to 1000 IU and to be sure I was getting enough, as it might impact the fatigue and pain as well. 1000 IU? That’s insanely high. As she put it, one would have to sunbathe fully nude for two solid hours every day of the year in full sun to absorb that amount. (As it happens I’m only a few IU short of the recommended dose thanks to my supplements but I thought I’d share, as you never know.)
At the doctor’s office the boy entertained the other patients waiting with his antics, particularly when he emptied a small cart and dubbed it a gondola train car. This was directly followed by him bringing a spiral-bound book to me and asking me to read it. “Okay,” I said perfectly evenly as he scrambled up onto the bench next to me, “this book is called… ‘Diabetes Explained’.” There were several muffled snorts of laughter, followed by more when he excitedly pointed out that the illustration showed insulin as a series of little gondola train cars carrying glucose to the bloodstream, shown as a track. So I sat there, seriously discussing glucose, insulin, stomachs, hypoglycaemia, and type 2 diabetes with the boy while the other patients pretended they weren’t listening. It was very amusing.
It’s a very mild day out there, which has done a lot for my mood. Especially since the boy was home sick with me yesterday, and I was polishing the copy-edits. It was nice not to have to fight the car heater or bitter winds for once while we were out. It was so nice that we made a day of it. After the doctor’s office we went to the bank, where he sat on the ledge of the automatic teller and asked what everything was, then held one of the statements and said, very importantly, that it was his List. Then we went to the second-hand book store, where I only found one of the books I was looking for, but three for him when we browsed the children’s books. And then, feeling very capable of handling an excited toddler in a restaurant on my own, I took him next door to the rotisserie where we had lunch out together, including dessert. I ended up eating most of the miniature brownie ice cream sundae that came with his meal, because he was perfectly content to scoop up the hot fudge sauce with his finger and lick it. And on top of that the waitress gave him an orange lollipop, the first one he’s ever had. They are decidedly “very good, Mama”.
My rejection letter isn’t the only thing that arrived in today’s mail; I missed a parcel delivery while we were out (of course). I believe it is a Buzz Lightyear baseball-style spring jacket for His Little Highness I won on eBay. I shall tuck it away to present as a gift or reward for a particularly good week.
The copy-edits have been returned to my editor. I now have four weeks to finish the hearthcraft book. I am simultaneously feeling confident and panicked. When I began, I was hoping that the body of the work would be finished by now, and March would be a month of fine-tuning and polishing. Things like this never work out the way one anticipates they will.
Ford Focus Commerical
Remember the post I made a month or so ago about the orchestra made from car parts? Specifically, the parts of a disassembled Ford Focus?
The commercial has been released in several forms. This is the full three-minute version, ‘Ode to a Ford’. (The first thirty-second version I saw had me gnashing my teeth because the musicians’ movements weren’t matching the music they were making, something that always drives me up the wall.)
The tag line is appropriate: ‘The New Ford Focus: Beautifully Arranged.’
Enjoy!
Irrelevant Photo Post
This is my office. It is currently a mess because I am writing one book to deadline, just finished the copy-edits of another, there is a sick toddler/preschooler in the house, HRH is away at rehearsals or performances most evenings, and I am trying to whack away at Gounod and Faure whenever I have a spare moment. Oh yes, and I am fighting that fibro/chronic fatigue thing that makes me choose between tidying up or writing.
For some reason, I thought a photo essay about the place where I spend a lot of my time might amuse you.
This is the north-east wall, the one that’s on the left as you walk in. Seen here is the mishmash of stuff that collects on my office shelves and on top of the books when I need them out of the way of wherever they were originally put. There are still things I took off the old vertical corner shelf that used to be where my corner desk now stands, from a couple of months ago. Candles, empty picture frames, that sort of thing. As I’m in the middle of writing a book, there are books piled on the front of the shelves that I’ve borrowed from people. Closer to the window you can see my two-tier office altar, where I’m drying rose petals at the moment. The shelf under it holds all the reference books for the book I’m currently working on. Well, most. Some, anyway. I do try to keep them all in one place. The window faces east. There’s another bookcase that size between the door and the one in the picture; this only shows the front half of the room.
Next we have my new-to-me corner desk. It’s not developed a lot of personality yet, as I’m trying to keep it neutral for the moment, and keep it relatively clear to spread books and papers out while I work. At the left are more reference books I’m using immediately for the current project. The walls above it are still bare from having had that vertical shelf there for so long. I still don’t know what to put up. There is a cluster of witch balls hanging from the ceiling at the moment. It’s hard to figure out what to hang in a corner, as the two walls meet and the display space is awfully close. Besides, to my right is…
… the collage wall, where I have hung a collection of various things including a print of the alternate Promethea #1 cover, an original photo of the moon taken by a student, fine art postcards, an original oil painting of a deer by my husband, an original charcoal sketch of a raven woman (also by HRH), a hand-painted Pictish banner, and so forth. You can only see the lower half of it. This collage is fluid, and shifts slowly as I phase things out and include new ones. In the upper left of this photo (and the right of the previous one) is a small creativity shrine that was made to be a salt box/cellar thing. (It currently has a lot of swan representations on it for serenity and insight, and usually a votive candle.) Behold also my pencil cup, various writing notebooks, the external hard drive (love!), a statue of Freyja, various foxy things, various small stuffed talismanic animals (the original Montreal NaNo psychic ferret among them!), my laptop (which doesn’t usually live here, but on the bedroom bookcase), the Chicago Manual of Style and a Webster’s among other reference books. What you can’t see underneath it is a mess of cables, a shredder, and two fourteen-inch piles of books that I have not yet read.
Turning again, we see the closet door swathed in a white sheer curtain (the door is mirrored — shudder), the cello on the floor, the case tossed over the cello stand in the corner, and the music stand bearing the Gounod and Faure. To the right you see my filing cabinet, more books (Is it a flat surface? It’s got books.), my red toolbox, a tote bag, and the carton the hard drive came in. Right at the bottom right-hand corner you can see the edge of the child gate that renders this room the only boy-free zone for the cats, as well as the little cat door we cut in it. That’s the viola case leaning against the wall and the music stand.
And finally, we have the often-present black kitten giving you the “What? I’m allowed to be here” look.
I’m never quite satisfied with my office; I always feel that it’s missing something, or not quite right. It never matches what I visualise it could become. Part of that is the fact that I live in it so much that it never has the chance to rest and become something; I’m always moving things around and reorganizing. It looks and feels quite different at night as well, and when the sun is shining. I would love a comfy chair in which to curl up and read, or even better, a chaise longue! But there’s no room for it.
Well, there you have it: a brief snapshot of my life. It will be different tomorrow, of course, and once the hearthcraft book is done I’ll be changing pictures and books to focus on something different again. And come spring, there will be flowers and boughs of buds, too.