Owls’ Court

Autumn Hiscock records her daily minutiae for posterity, featuring cello, handspinning, family, and writing.

Ups and Downs


Seeing the end of October creep up on me, and knowing that the last time I sat down to work on the Great Canadian Novel was about two and a half weeks ago, I threw some Tori Amos in the CD changer yesterday and sat down on the living room floor with my laptop. I wrote three pages and felt really good about myself. I’d stopped being as curious as I had been about my GCN world, and deliberately immersing myself in it again was good - it felt comfortable. I also felt a bit worried, what with NaNoWriMo looming. Having two novels on the go is a bit like having a new child and having to soothe the elder sibling: no, I still love you, I haven’t forgotten you, this new baby just needs so much attention…

Then I amazed myself by getting up and making a wonderful dinner that included baked chicken, and brussels sprouts done in cheese, onions, and lemon butter. (”What are these?” asks my husband. “Baby cabbages,” I answer, unconcerned, as I begin to eat. “Oh,” he says, munches on one, and begins to rave about it. “I didn’t expect you to like brussels sprouts so much,” I remark calmly, reaching for my water glass. He faltered for only an instant, brave man.) After dinner, he asked what he’d done to deserve a big dinner, and I told him that as of Friday, I wouldn’t be able to do things like this, so I thought I’d get one in before I sacrificed my life to NaNoWriMo.

Yesterday was pretty good. Then this morning…

Argh.

I spent two hours setting up Eudora as my mail program, importing my Outlook Express stuff, and generally fumbling around until I can at least use the ruddy thing. I have experience with Eudora; we used it at work once or twice a week to mail out newsletters and such, so it’s not like I’ve never seen it before. Still, I get as frustrated as the next busy human when I can’t grasp things immediately. I also went through a bunch of old e-mail to delete it from OE before I exported stuff to Eudora, simply to save room, and it always takes longer than I expect - click, scan, click to delete; rinse, repeat. Boring. Like housework. Tidy, polish, sweep, dust.

Gods, it’s all so exciting, I think I’ll have to take a break and go lie down.







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