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thanateWell, I did have to ask the new guy why he was talking to me after the fourth time he completely failed to take the extra long pauses and curt answers as a hint. No, really, I live here; I'm not just sitting around to provide you for opportunities for small talk. Go work, so you can go away. Thanks. (Yes, I really am that rude when pushed; whether that's a failing or not depends who you're talking to.)
In any case, I was going to talk about good stuff. Let's see:
*we have heat vents, functioning, in every room of the house. Crazy. (now if only they'd managed to install the new ones in the old rooms without drilling about 4 extra randomly placed holes around them... it's really quite odd.) There will be no further weekend & evening calls from duct guys. Yay!
*Hot chocolate with amaretto. This is slightly frustrating to me, as I am not used to wanting consumables that are not appropriate to anytime, but it is now evening & I am not going anywhere further, and I am drinking heavily: large glass of hot chocolate, made with milk, with possibly slightly more than a shot of amaretto. Ooh. (uh, yeah, I still don't really drink or anything.)
*I have worn my exciting lacy white jacket *twice* this month so far. (Notes to self: Cool clothes are for wearing, not forgetting about in the back of the closet.)
*Got several very cool pieces back from the ceramics firing. (but there's also some of that I want to complain about, so yeah.)
*And while external factors and feeling like I'm about to come down with a cold or something factors have combined to sabotage my wordcount, (nodding off over the keyboard is really not helpful!) I have mentally achieved several novel things:
~figured out what this book is about (as opposed to where the characters were going physically: Mara goes looking for a god, and eventually works out that that's her now. Also I'm starting to get a sense of what she is & isn't good at, when she's not completely screwed up by everybody dying on her, which is where she was last book)
~partly banished that horrible horrible horrible commercial (on during football games-- some travel thing, with the stupid parents who leave their infant with their ancient grandparents on no notice to fly off to Florida? No, really, that thing has kept me awake at night I have such a visceral hate reaction to it. Not ok on any level, ever.) by reminding myself that I'm writing a book about someone who travels across a continent with her infant, who would be horrified by the suggestion that she would leave him somewhere she wasn't going to be. Besides, why would she have to? (this would be an advantage to your base cultural assumptions including that clothing is optional)
~And I've had my first post-VP moment of a lesson I wasn't quite ready for at the time turning up and applying. I'd seen it before on![[profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kateelliott's blog, but Steve Gould handed me a piece of paper, now taped into my writing journal, with her advice: "The first draft doesn't have to be good or even coherent. I just has to be DONE!" I've written novels before, and my novel process works just fine going from start to end, with or without outline depending on how much of where I'm going I know ahead of time. But I've never tried to write a trilogy before, and even by book three, I'm still kicking at the bonds of the fact that my first drafts seem to have beginnings and ends and great gaping torn nylons style holes in the middle, and possibly not enough plot coherency to go around. But I think this is just because I can't hold a whole trilogy worth of plot & background research in my head a time (yet!) and once I get to the end of book 3 I'll have enough sketch of the bits and arcs to put the beginning back together properly. Much of which I knew in words before, but I do hate writing something I'm pretty sure won't actually work. Rewriting is not my thing, but I think this is how to make this particular thing work.
Xposty from dreamwidth, but yes, I'm still here.
In any case, I was going to talk about good stuff. Let's see:
*we have heat vents, functioning, in every room of the house. Crazy. (now if only they'd managed to install the new ones in the old rooms without drilling about 4 extra randomly placed holes around them... it's really quite odd.) There will be no further weekend & evening calls from duct guys. Yay!
*Hot chocolate with amaretto. This is slightly frustrating to me, as I am not used to wanting consumables that are not appropriate to anytime, but it is now evening & I am not going anywhere further, and I am drinking heavily: large glass of hot chocolate, made with milk, with possibly slightly more than a shot of amaretto. Ooh. (uh, yeah, I still don't really drink or anything.)
*I have worn my exciting lacy white jacket *twice* this month so far. (Notes to self: Cool clothes are for wearing, not forgetting about in the back of the closet.)
*Got several very cool pieces back from the ceramics firing. (but there's also some of that I want to complain about, so yeah.)
*And while external factors and feeling like I'm about to come down with a cold or something factors have combined to sabotage my wordcount, (nodding off over the keyboard is really not helpful!) I have mentally achieved several novel things:
~figured out what this book is about (as opposed to where the characters were going physically: Mara goes looking for a god, and eventually works out that that's her now. Also I'm starting to get a sense of what she is & isn't good at, when she's not completely screwed up by everybody dying on her, which is where she was last book)
~partly banished that horrible horrible horrible commercial (on during football games-- some travel thing, with the stupid parents who leave their infant with their ancient grandparents on no notice to fly off to Florida? No, really, that thing has kept me awake at night I have such a visceral hate reaction to it. Not ok on any level, ever.) by reminding myself that I'm writing a book about someone who travels across a continent with her infant, who would be horrified by the suggestion that she would leave him somewhere she wasn't going to be. Besides, why would she have to? (this would be an advantage to your base cultural assumptions including that clothing is optional)
~And I've had my first post-VP moment of a lesson I wasn't quite ready for at the time turning up and applying. I'd seen it before on
kateelliott's blog, but Steve Gould handed me a piece of paper, now taped into my writing journal, with her advice: "The first draft doesn't have to be good or even coherent. I just has to be DONE!" I've written novels before, and my novel process works just fine going from start to end, with or without outline depending on how much of where I'm going I know ahead of time. But I've never tried to write a trilogy before, and even by book three, I'm still kicking at the bonds of the fact that my first drafts seem to have beginnings and ends and great gaping torn nylons style holes in the middle, and possibly not enough plot coherency to go around. But I think this is just because I can't hold a whole trilogy worth of plot & background research in my head a time (yet!) and once I get to the end of book 3 I'll have enough sketch of the bits and arcs to put the beginning back together properly. Much of which I knew in words before, but I do hate writing something I'm pretty sure won't actually work. Rewriting is not my thing, but I think this is how to make this particular thing work.Xposty from dreamwidth, but yes, I'm still here.