Got no time to call my own.

December 4, 2009 Progress Notes:

Saturnalia

Words today: -200. Yes, that was progress.
Words total: 11,800.

Reason for stopping: It's late, I'm still exhausted, and I have to both do groceries and go to a thing at the Merrill tomorrow afternoon and can't just sleep until two.

Darling du Jour: N/A.

Things Yet to Cough Up Their Names: The band name Zeke and Gregory have been gigging under; the somewhat tragic singer of Gregory's old band; the name of Gregory's old band, for that matter; some song titles penned by Zeke.
Mean Things: N/A.

Books in progress: Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl.
The glamour: Finding out that next week at the Dayjob could possibly -- yes, inconceivable as it may sound -- be worse than this week. Oh lordy.

Luckily, I could dose myself with leftover Indian takeout and two hours of sustained knitting before I did harm to myself or others. Just think of it as reaching the antivenin on time.

---

So here's the reason why you read and keep the negative reviews too, not just the positive ones.

Sometimes the negative reviews accuse the story of something that you, when you look back on it (having vaguely not liked that story anymore for years anyway, but not having thought much of why) find to be not without merit. And then turning it over in bed while you're having your awful sinus-headache stress-induced insomnia like we did this week, you idly wonder how you'd treat the topic now, if you were coming at it again. And realize that you have a backburnered novel project that's dealing with that topic now. And some things start to make themselves clear, and then you have to hop out of bed, fumble for your glasses, and scribble a page of notes in the dark at two in the morning so you don't lose all that good stuff.

Or, short version? The damnedest things can be super valuable to building a stubborn, moody book.

So. The structure telescoped back in for me a little while back; the thing I thought was the end is very possibly the beginning of the middle. Come to think of it, this always happens. But it explains a lot about why I was having so much damn trouble shoveling enough dirt into that black hole where the plot was supposed to live.

With that information in mind, I think I found in earnest where I took the wrong turn here: basically, yeah, I still held the Royal Commission on the Plot, just under suppressed circumstances, and there's a lot of explaining things to myself in this chapter and consequently, going the wrong way in search of some plot. So once I got sufficiently over wanting to kill and eat people because of the Dayjob, I started trimming and moving stuff around and recasting and such.

I'm not going to say I'm officially working on this again. Frankly, I am still way too busy right now and I still like "When Your Number Isn't Up" more and I still have to finish "Closet Monster" and turn it in before I can really commit myself to anything else consistently. But I will noodle. And we will see.

Let's rebalance this thing.

Okay, I've been bitching a fair bit lately. Mostly merited, yeah, but no way to live your life. So.

Good Things:

1) Dug up the first Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker EP and popped it on this morning. I forgot how much I freaking like this band. Six songs on the thing, and I like three and love two. And this is their first baby-steps tentative indie EP.

2) Avgolemono with brown rice.

3) I got to chat with several divisions and brigades of The People at the Merril Collection Christmas Cream Tea this afternoon, including some I haven't seen in a couple years at least. There was scones and cream and jam and the singing of Lovecraftian Christmas carols. I am incredibly fortunate to have such a large and goofy SFF community in this town.

4) Dominion had sea salted dark chocolate and Green & Black's on sale for cheap, and good pears and bananas too.

5) My purple bamboo shrug is over half done.

6) There is hockey tonight and I will listen to it on the radio and fill my apartment with the smell of cooking things.

7) My panelist rebate from Worldcon came Thursday like Money From the Sky (tm).

8) I know smart people who do cool things.

9) I got to write last night and it made me feel clean and sharp.

10) All those first-world conveniences we don't mention overmuch, like central heating, warm wool socks, apple-ginger tea, and this Internet, but nonetheless appreciate in a sincere way and not that mealymouthed way where people tell you to not complain because what you have could be taken away; which we appreciate in the way you appreciate a simple gift.

And you?