wheeeeeeeeeeee!Dude. I dunno. They just came that way.
Progress notes for 5 May 2006:
Undertow
New Words: 1,207
Total Words: (actual wordcount / manuscript) 23,201 / 25,1250
Pages: 105
Deadline: August 1
Words per day to meet deadline: 873
Reason for stopping: Taking a shower, coming back for another pass after the hot water has done its thing.
23,201 / 100,000 (23.2%) |
105 / 400 (26.3%) |
Also, about 900 words on Patience & Fortitude. Because even though I gave away one of the protagonists to
katallen and cpolk with instructions to keep him out of my hair for three years, he was too slippery for them.Stimulants: watercress salad with scallops.
Exercise: meeting
ashacat at the gym at two.Mail: A Locus! Which has nice reviews of "Wane." As does the new Tangent Online.
Today's words Word don't know: n/a
Words I'm surprised Word do know: n/a
Mean Things: Where do I start? There's the angst, and the setting up a nice girl to get iced, and the advice for the lovelorn...
Tyop du jour: n/a
Darling du jour: I wrote a truly fantastic paragraph yesterday, the kind that makes me actually think there's hope for me yet.
They moved along the row of peas in stooped, companionable silence. Pods pattered into the bucket, first a thin layer and then handfuls. Some plants still held sprays of blossom among the nearly-ripe legumes and their curling tendrils. Cricket snapped one off and tucked it into her own thin creepery hair; Lucienne, laughing silently, copied. The flowers were baby-pink, breath-white. They smelled so sweet Cricket kept looking around for the lilies.
I also love that this scene is in a sort-of-hard-SF book. Alas, it fails the feminist test. They talk about boys. (This ties into the whole heterosexual comment, above.) (Okay, they talk about boys and armed insurrections. But the boys are in there.)
And the mugging by Promethean Age books is producing its usual crop of bent theology. I'm partcularly fond of this bit, as commented by a character who will renounce neither his Christianity nor his sexuality, and is facing the inevitable consequences:
"I loved; I will not say I was wrong to love. I will burn." He pressed his fingers across his mouth. "The devil hath made me ironical. Were it God I so loved, no Heaven at all would be barred me--and all for refusal to recant. A little breaking on the wheel, an emasculation or a blinding and the gates would ope. Child's play, really, when you think about it."
Also, I really liked this, which is just a fragment:
'Twas only Galahad managed to get himself translated bodily into Heaven. The rest of us must muddle through in the approved manner.
Hmm. If I am liking my writing this much, I may be off the plateau. if I am off the plateau, I may be able to write a book or two without bitching the entire way about how hard it is.
That would be nice.
However, I've been on this particular plateau since midway through The Stratford Man, going on three years now, and I have heralded its demise before. We shall see, professor. I may just have been having a good day. *g*
Books in progress: Wendy Moore, The Knife Man;
Interesting tidbit of the day:
The most famous instance of preservation by immersion in alcohol was the casking of the remains of Lord Nelson in the ship's brandy stores after his death during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. That much is true — Nelson was, in effect, pickled to get as much of him home in as decent a state as possible. But not in rum, as would later be claimed in lore. No, Nelson had been immersed in brandy for shipment home. At Gibralter the fluid was replaced with wine.
According to baseless hearsay, when the barrel was opened in England, it was considerably less than full. (In reality, Nelson arrived fairly topped up.)
Other writing-related work: about 900 words on bloody Patience & Fortitude as noted above. Because I am not supposed to be writing that.
The glamorous life of the writer: I really need to do this laundry before it eats me. But it's not going to happen today. Or tomorrow. Or Sunday. Maybe Monday. Hello, overscheduled girl.