Damn Squirrels

I had squirrels running around my brain scratching at the walls yesterday. It was incredibly frustrating that I couldn’t rein everything in and actually get words down on paper.

I manage to bring the total word count up to 4,843, which is a stunningly weak addition of 254 words. I did track down some references, however, and I got lots of other writing-related stuff done during the day, such as the contract work and research for other stuff, which counts somewhat.

It’s just annoying when a regular day of work yields so little concrete increase in the actual MS.

In about fifteen minutes I’ll be waking Liam up from his nap (if he isn’t already awake) for a quick lunch because my parents are in town for the afternoon, and we’re due to pick them up at the airport at 12:15.

Lughnassadh

Happy Lughnassadh, everyone! Yes, it took me a while to understand why I’d had an odd desire to bake bread over the past week, what with the ridiculous heat and humidity, but when I finally clued in yesterday I cheerfully whipped up a batch of my herb bread. Every single herb in it came out of the back garden. Rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, onions — everything. And I made it with whole wheat flour, because it’s what I had. I’ve never used entirely whole wheat flour for it before; in the past I’ve blended one-third whole wheat to two-thirds white, but the recipe creates a heavyish bread to begin with so I wasn’t drawn to replacing more. The whole wheat flour made it even heavier, and added a nice nutty flavour. It’s definitely something I’ll need to be in the mood for, though.

I got my contracts in the mail today, both for ESTC and the series editorship. So hurrah, it’s poring over dense prose tonight with a pair of glasses and a pencil to make sure all’s in order before I sign them and ship them back.

We had a tremendously violent storm last night, which was exciting once we’d unplugged everything and HRH had done his weather-thingy to stop the funnel cloud from fully forming a few blocks away. (Yeah, not so fun, looking off your back porch to see the clouds circling like that, and feeling the downdraft begin. Good thing I live with a weather god.) Our upstairs neighbours brought down ice cream and cream soda and frozen raspberries for floats, and after everyone had provided HRH with the energy necessary to fight the bad things off without totally killing himself, we all sat in the kitchen to drink them by candlelight while we listened to the storm play out. Lots of mess and damage around the island, we noticed this morning. Some parts of our borough still don’t have power.

This morning Scarlet and I took a short trip out to an art supply store in the East End we’d never visited before, and I finally came home with candlemaking supplies. It’s good, because I’ve been dying to pour new candles to use while I write this book; it’s important, for some reason. I have vegetable wax, since they didn’t have beeswax beads and I didn’t feel like hacking at a beeswax block. I’ve never worked with it before, but I’m looking forward to trying something new.

Okay. I’ve done work-related research and correspondence, and some adjusting of my TOC, and a brief look through the contracts. Time to get going on the MS itself.

ESTC Update

Total word count, ESTC: 4,676
New words today: 1,976

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
4,676 / 50,000
(9.4%)

Wow; almost ten percent done. For some reason, that alarms me mildly. Today I wrote two rituals plus some stream of consciousness stuff on magical practice that will have to be prettified and expanded at a later date. (Not, alas, the aforementioned section on centering and grounding and basic energy use. I couldn’t face it; I just couldn’t. How do I say the same thing in a yet another way after doing it three times already?) As I mentioned the other day, rituals go fast and create a surprising amount of word count in a short period of time.

I remembered something that I’d forgotten around three o’clock. My window of maximum productivity is between two-thirty and six o’clock in the afternoon; it always has been, except for that odd little blip that had me doing prep work on the green witch book in the early morning for a short period of time. Now I don’t feel so bad about not being able to properly settle into writing until an hour or so into the afternoon. I’ll do research and reading in the morning then, and let what I could write about in the afternoon percolate in the back of my brain, and stop fretting about only getting a single-digit count of new words down before ye olde productive time kicks in.

It Haunts Me

For the fourth time running in writing a contracted book, I find myself having to include a discussion regarding basic energy use.

::headdesk::

Curse me for being responsible.

I unplugged my computer from the router earlier to better ignore the siren song of the Internet and email, because I was using it as an escape from writing. (Seven new words; I had a lousy seven words for over two hours.) Then I had to plug it in again to do research. There is no way to win.

Back into the fray. At least now I’m at 515 words, which is approximately a 75% increase in output today so far.

Le Party

So we finally had that smallish birthday thing on Saturday afternoon, organised by Tal and co-hosted by him and Prospero’s Daughter. It was pleasant, but it ended up exactly as I had been trying to avoid in my own planning: I spent most of my time keeping an eye on Liam, so I never really got to relax or actually talk to people. I really appreciated it when a couple of people made a point of coming over to sit or stand next to me for a few minutes to share some time with me now and again, because I was feeling remarkably isolated. It was the trade-off I couldn’t avoid: if the people I wanted there were in attendance, then there was no one to watch Liam elsewhere. Everyone else seemed to be having a really good time, though, so I’m happy for that. The cake was awesome, and I deliberately took the corner bit so that I got extra icing and a huge buttercream rose on top. Although pretty much as soon as I finished that we had to flee because Liam was cranky and tired, which rushed the present-giving and subsequent thank yous, making me vaguely irritated and feeling like I’d never really had the opportunity to enjoy my own party, let alone have a second piece of cake.

And speaking of presents, I was caught completely by surprise by the group gift being a cheque to finally allow me to purchase the CD player for the car that I’ve been trying to get around to buying for two years now. We went out yesterday to research and price them, and if I add the gift certificate that was the birthday present from my in-laws, it will pretty much cover the cost of the unit we’ve chosen, the parts needed to fit it into the car, and the extended warranty. The vague plan is to go back to the store today before I pick up Liam to purchase it and make the appointment for installation later this week, which happens to be free as part of a current promotion. Thanks, everyone!

Notwithstanding the lack of a second piece of cake, I did have a cup of excellent beer given to me (liquid barley sugar that carried a 14% alcoholic kick!), and a cup of the now infamous Baronial sangria. I had to make myself hot dogs at home after Liam went to bed, though, because I’d only managed six bites of a brochette at the party what with making Liam’s dinner and feeding half a brochette to him, and dropping another half on the ground while sitting on the edge of the deck trying to feed myself and watch Liam eating at the same time.

Another excellent birthday gift was the first season of Slings & Arrows, given to me by Elim, the second and final disk of which we enjoyed after we got home.

All in all, I’ve liked that my birthday celebrations began the weekend before my birthday, and have sort of quietly been carrying on for the past three weeks, what with people handing me little gifts or treats or doing nice things for me here and there. Next year, though, if we do the party thing at all I’m putting my foot down and scheduling it when my in-laws are in town, even if that means August, because I want to be able to fully enjoy my own birthday extravagana.

In Which We See The Triumphant Return Of The Wordmeter

Not bad at all for day one of the writing schedule. Welcome back, little Wordmeter!

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
2,700 / 50,000
(5.4%)

(Oh look, they recoded it to include the fractional percentages, so I don’t have to go in and fix the HTML myself.)

Total word count, ESTC: 2,700
New words today: 2,061

I started off with 639 words of notes and outline, if you’re wondering why the two numbers don’t match up on the first day.

The working title of the new book (Everything She Touches Changes) is too long to type out every time, so the acronym it is. This is the only time I’m going to explain it. Henceforth, it shall be a mystery.

It’s All Coming Back

Years of NaNo training are kicking in again.

Why use the word “contextualize” when you can say “create a context for”? Look, my word count just jumped three words higher!

(Yes, yes, I’ll tighten it up when the draft is done. Let me be for now. Word count is an artificial measure of accomplishment, but at least it’s something tangible to which I can point and say, “See, I did this today.”)