28.7k, lighting, the albino alligator, and an excerpt

[thanate]

All the last little details of the construction have kind of blown up again. We have... possibly full primer coats? (I haven't finished checking yet) and plaster dust vacuumed, and floors are going in the downstairs tomorrow. The electrician is putting up light fixtures. But we bought the fixtures, despite their being listed as covered in the estimate (I think this is just Holly forgetting something & we'll sort it out-- being able to make those choices is ok by us.) Unfortunately, the cool outside lights grauwulf picked out are too big to seal against the siding manufacturer's idea of the right size for outdoor electrical boxes. Investigations are ongoing into whether this can be circumvented, or whether we're going to have to put something cheap in now and hack together some other solution for later. As I wandered around trying to find the box from the ceiling fan this morning, I discovered that the roof is still leaking ever so slightly along the new/old shingle join. Also, starting to mold slightly. Poor Tracey is up on the roof in the rain looking into that. I shall have to catch him before he leaves to give him that box of cookies.

In any case, there was a small former-VPer meet and write-in at Teaism last night (previous to which I went to the DC aquarium and discovered that albino alligators have glowing pink eyes!!! I will not now buy an alligator taxidermy form to cover in white lace & hollow out for LED eyeballs. Really.) and discovered that there is a metro stop on the green line within sight of teaism's door, which I had no idea existed. Meetup was fairly nice, though the split between write-in and socializing probably could have worked better. jazzfish and I stayed another half-hour or so to do some actual writing... in my case because at the time everyone else bailed, I had ended with this:

“You are the one who does not belong, foreign witch,” he said, trying to force her arm away from him. “You are an unnatural creature, inflicting harm against the nature of the River and our city upon it, and you must be stopped before you [[corrupt the queen?]]” She stopped his arm with magic this time, and then the rest of him as he tried to jerk the arm back, so that he wouldn’t hurt himself.

“Whatever you are threatening, you cannot do it. If I have to turn you into a statue, or the fish that you apparently wish to become, I will do so to keep you from harming this woman or her son further. You have misused the principles of sorcery and brought harm against yourself those you claim to represent. Now go away, and do not trouble anyone in this house.”

She released him, and he reached his hands toward her eyes, as if he would claw them out. So she turned him into a fish. Righty, then.... Mara is not very good at fight scenes.

(Then I went and got mochi, in the hopes that it would help. It hasn't helped this bit yet, but I did go on to something better.)

ETA: This discussion might also be useful to me, for future reference re:Mara.

Comments

[jazzfish]

For me it was that sense of holy cow the plot just unstuck itself and seeing the shape of the story with another character in it, and having Exciting Stuff not all crammed into the last three pages, &c &c. I mean, seriously, it was like ... like a drain unclogging, which is kind of an unappetizing simile and not even all that accurate, except in the general feel of it.

And yeah, more writing-time and less "hey cool other writers!"-time would have been good. Next time.

[thanate]

Yay unstuck! Maybe a dam/floodgates opening would be a better image? (Now I'm imagining writing being like the locks going around a rapids... the reader, of course, gets to go down the waterfall in a barrel.)

I would have been ok with either more write-in or more meet-up, but preferably with the appropriate expectation set in advance. Also, if I hadn't been pushing a wordcount goal, the "talk a bit, type a bit" kind of pace would have been less frustrating.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Lucky you, getting together with VPers! I saw the arrangements being made on the various lists and wished that either I lived closer to DC or that everyone would come to Los Angeles to visit. :D

Your WIP sounds like a cool read.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Well, you have sartorias...

One of the topics that came up in discussion was that we don't seem to have a really good way of keeping track of our classmates; we had two people from the 14 class show up last night who had not actually been aware that they were both local. My to-do list also includes proposing to our class that we try to set up some kind of map we can put ourselves on, so that we know who is local & who to keep an eye out for when traveling & suchlike.

Thanks-- I definitely hope it'll be a cool read by the time I'm done with it. :)