Thud: Short Story, the Happy Marchers March to Death

March 25, 2008 Progress Notes:

"Six" (working title)

Words today: 450.
Words total: 450.
Reason for stopping: Need this to cook, and I need to get to bed.
Liquid Refreshment: Water.
Munchies: Lemon meringue pie. Mmm, pie.

Darling du Jour: "Saturday's child has far to go," Six's father says under his fat moustache, and Six hates him. Father is the agribaron of the whole central district. Everyone in central knows him; he has three whole cars on the Moving Market staffed by Six and Joe's big sisters, and on Sunday market the papermen and water-sellers and the three rich owners of Hydro tip their hats at his clan through the windows.

Words Matthew Won't Admit to Knowing:
Mean Things: Envy. Getting ratted out.
Research Roundup: The Redpath sugar plant down by the lake; refining beet sugar; the number seven in folklore; clove cigarettes (I had to ask: I've never smelled one); etymology of "bad seed".

Best research bit tonight? "The sugar-refining industry often uses bone-char (calcinated animal bones) for decolorizing." Sugar is of death!
Books in progress: textbooks.
The glamour: I finished my paper with an hour to spare this afternoon and handed it in, despite it pissing fat snowflakes outside. I now know more than I ever cared to about the treatment quality available to women patients under the Galenic and iatromechanical models of the body. Tonight was declared Shore Leave. Two papers left to write before I am released from this semester into sweet, sweet freedom.

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I apparently have two preoccupations this winter: the apocalypse and gardening. Look for apocalypse, gardening, and/or apocalypse gardening stories in fine fiction outlets near you once I can actually get some more done instead of starting fifteen million of them and letting them sit.

That's all. It's really been all Glamour this week. In three weeks (and two papers) I will be entertaining again, I promise.

We scoff at critical interpretation.

cristalia: (Okay, the alchemist library-salvage dudes can have a subway train too.)
cristalia: (I still don't know where that puts me.)
matociquala: hee
matociquala: "An ongoing theme in Bobet's work is the miraculous subway train, which symbolizes the providential workings of the human creative unconscious--"
stillsostrange: "And sometimes makes characters go splat."
matociquala: well, that's what happens when you get in front of the creative unconscious.
cristalia: "In Bobet's autobiography, Eaten By Bears, she characterized the symbol of the subway train as evidence of her thinking subway tunnels are really fuckin' sweet."
matociquala: LOL
matociquala: Well sure
matociquala: I'm pretty sure that's what all teh fucking flowers in DH Lawrence are about, too.
matociquala: He liked flowers.
cristalia: I'm so blogging this. *g*


(I still don't have any damn plot. :p )

Thud: Short Story

March 26, 2008 Progress Notes:

"Six" (working title)

Words today: 3000.
Words total: 3450.
Reason for stopping: Draft. *collapses*
Liquid Refreshment: Water.
Munchies: Pasta with basil marinara sauce, oranges.

Darling du Jour: Their robes rustle like pigeon wings, like the wind going through the tall pasture, and their hands are clean-nailed but rough as any farmsman's. Their walls are covered, lined, padded with books and books and books. Their eyes are dark. Their eyes are dark as stars, and the smell of their hands and books and eyes is burnt cinnamon toast and the devil.

Words Matthew Won't Admit to Knowing:
Mean Things: Alchemists: Threat or Menace? Understanding why you've been thrashing for attention and everyone's been all uptight for ages. Making the hard choice.
Research Roundup: Converted subway cars; green roof weight limitations; seventh son of seventh son mythology.

Books in progress: Textbooks.
The glamour: I spent the last seven hours doing this, mostly because I'm waiting for that Inferno essay assignment to come through e-mail like the professor promised it would this morning (since he just assigned it today)before he sulked about my not coming to class this same morning and practically shut the door on me. I'm...yeah. If it doesn't show up and it's still due on Wednesday next? There are going to be words.

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Oof.

This is a crappy crap crap first draft indeed and I had to squeeze it out of my brain like a lemon and corner it repeatedly to get it to go. But at least that's one thing off my giant to do list.

I'm gonna go turn off my brain and look at some cats.