Daily Archives: January 26, 2009

Orchestrated Update

I’ve been struggling to get back into the flow of Orchestrated. I’m so close to the end, and it’s frustrating because things are moving at a snail’s pace. Not the actual story, but my execution of it. I worked on it January 5, then it lay untouched (other work with deadlines, small child at home) until last Thursday when I got just over six hundred words down in it. Today, I ground out a more respectable amount of work, but it still feels like pulling teeth. I hate having to leave things aside for more than a day; I lose the flow and the mindset and the sense of what’s happening. The longer it’s aside, the longer it takes me to get back into it.

Orchestrated:
New words today: 1,588
Total word count, Orchestrated: 60,840

I didn’t even register that I broke 60K. As that had been my arbitrary target word count for the completed project, I’m going to have to revise that to something between 65K and 70K. I’d like to wrap it up in 5K, although it will feel rushed. What I need is a completed first draft, though, so I can go back and start doing the subtle stuff instead of trying to put the subtle stuff in as I go. A first draft is too clunky for that, especially in the wrap-up part. Get the skeleton down, then flesh it out; that’s what I should be thinking at this point.

To that end, I will write brief one-line descriptions of what scenes need to happen between here and the end, then expand them one by one. We’ll see how that goes.

Boy’s Post Up, Plus A Brief Weekend Review

I finally published the 43-month post for the boy, and backdated it. It had been sitting there for quite some time, only missing photos. So that’s done.

Other than that, well, I finished knitting my slippers and had fun felting for the very first time. The slippers fit my feet fine around the foot, but ended up two inches too long and pointy instead of rounded. I suspect I misread part of the pattern that said ‘knit till 22 cm long;’ I measured from the start of the piece instead of from the last increase, thereby missing about three or four inches of knitting. I’ll try again with the different measurement to see what happens. In the meantime they are warm, which is what I wanted, and after cutting two inches off the not-supposed-to-be-pointy toes and seaming them shut, they’re fine for home use. Although I took them to my cello lesson yesterday and my teacher thought they were great, and has asked for the pattern. So. Also, the machine felting was much more exciting than it should have been. (I take my fun where I can get it.)

I still have the 7/8; I called to make an appointment for the adjustments and the evaluation of the slice/scratch/cut thing last Saturday and the people who I needed to look at it weren’t there. I’ll call them at the Montreal store this week and make an appointment with them for Friday night. Rental is $75 per month for a cello for at least two months, and 70% of the rental fee goes toward eventual purchase of whatever, which is good news. I had a very frustrating cello lesson on Sunday, which I would like to think means I’m plateauing and am about to make some sort of brilliant breakthrough, but I suspect only reflects the general fatigue and frustration of the weekend. We’d been invited out for dinner Saturday night but had to decline due to a previous engagement, which ended up being cancelled by the other person involved two hours before it was supposed to begin, which didn’t do much for my mood this weekend, either. Especially since we’d had a second invitation for Saturday night that we’d also turned down.

On the other hand, the boy had his first official pagan playgroup session yesterday morning (which he is already calling ‘circle’) and had a blast casting the circle with singing and instrument-playing and marching, talking about spring and the return of the sun, planting seeds and making Brigid’s crosses out of pipe-cleaners, then having a snack afterwards. I suspect that he would much prefer something more frequent than once a month.

I’ve finally downloaded iTunes to test-run it as a possible alternative to WMP and purchasing music via eMusic. Other than that, I am generally exhausted, and have had not-nice headaches the past three days. But I ate a piece of chocolate cake for breakfast. So there.