Daily Archives: June 22, 2010

Tuesday Activity Log

Today, I:

– wrote a blog post about yesterday’s writing
– made a hair appointment
– handled an electronic agenda crisis (my iPod Touch ATE MY APP and all the data I’d input in it over the past six months, sob)
– wrote two-thirds of the interview (hello, four solid hours of work)
– uploaded the steampunk cello scene to Cate (only a month after I wrote it, good grief)
– talked with real estate agent (I am very tired of all this — the process and the contracts and the legal deadlines, not our agent, who is brilliant in every way)
– planned some more of the trip (just wee bits left over from yesterday’s huge session)
– made Rice Krispie squares
– wrote about 1,000 words longhand

In Which She Blinks In Astonishment

I edited yesterday’s activity log to reflect the writing I did before I shut down the computer before supper, because while twenty-one hundred words was once upon a time a regular daily output for me, I haven’t really been writing for the past year due to a variety of reasons. Accordingly, I felt it was worth recording for myself. I’ve done a couple of brief scenes this last month, but nothing major.

Well, after I put the boy to bed and had a bath, I pulled my notebook and pen out again, and wrote for another two hours.

Yesterday’s total word count: 4,224.

(Approximately. This is all longhand, after all, and I’m not counting every single word on sixteen pages of longhand. I did the counting how many words per line on half a page, averaged them, then multiplied by the number of lines on the page, then by the number of pages.)

Ceri has characterised this as being tackled by fiction writing. I will gladly take being ambushed by a story. It’s not like it came out of nowhere, though; I thought the initial scene out two nights ago while trying to fall asleep, a result of wondering ‘What would I have done with that situation instead?’ at someone else’s story decision. And it all unrolled, a scene with a different setting and characters and unique backstory, set several months after the different decision I would have made as a storyteller. After a day or so I decided to write it out so I wouldn’t forget it, because I really liked it, and I’m glad I did, because it led to another different scene that followed the first. It’s very in media res, and while I thought it was a cliffhanger ending for something it could very well be the beginning of something else. It would certainly be a very active way to begin a story. I am enjoying it very much.

(Alas, Cate; while this is set in an alternate London, it is not our ladies’ cello society steampunk adventure. Which reminds me, I need to finally upload the scene I wrote a month ago for you. But every little bit helps get me back on the writing wagon, so to speak. Or the writing stagecoach, perhaps, to use a more appropriate metaphor?)