Swing, pendulum, swing low; got no place to call my own...

[leahbobet]

July 27, 2009 Progress Notes:

Saturnalia

Words today: 400.
Words total: 4600.
Reason for stopping: Ran out of steam, and I'm trying to get to bed before 1am tonight.

Darling du Jour: He looked away; at the light in the smeared window, the beat-up wooden coffee table underneath it that'd been shoved aside sometime last month and never moved back. It'd grown a tablecloth of litter: homemade staff paper and picked-clean ashtrays and dirty glasses, notes scrawled on envelopes left over from when the post was still running regularly. He'd meant to clean it up last week, sometime before the crack in the mirror and after the fridge quit on them.

Things Yet to Cough Up Their Names: Some club two levels up; its owner, who apparently owes Zeke precisely two favours; the band name Zeke and Gregory have been gigging under.
Mean Things: Hearing things, specifically Macguffins; that it's the end of the world and they're still Living Like Boys (tm).
Today's Unnecessary Stuntwriting: Zeke said the city normally runs in 4/4. So I wrote the paragraph describing the sound of the city in 4/4. And then the one where it's working less well in 6/8, and sang them out to make sure the beats were right. Nobody will ever notice but me. Hee.

Research Roundup: Time signatures, about which I have forgotten way too much.
Books in progress: China Mieville, The City and the City.
The glamour: Housecleaning! So: laundry, washing the sheets (which I still have to put back on the bed, crap), taking out a bunch of recycling and organics, groceries, dishes, garden maintenance. We are easing out of Living in Filth into General Disorder Reigns, although My Mother Can Come Over will require another day or two of tidying.

---

I think I'm going to cut down these metrics again. Every time I do them I realize they're long and silly.

Any particular categories you want me to keep?

Comments

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I in general don't find metrics all that interesting. I in specific have always read yours, and also matociquala's. I'm going to put that on a macro so I don't have to keep mistyping it.

But if you were going to only keep one thing for my personal edification? (Yes, yes, I know that's not the point of metrics, but you asked), keep the Darling du Jour, because I really, really like yours.

[kafkonia.livejournal.com]

I vote for Words Today, Words So Far, Reason for Stopping, and The Glamour.

I find that Darlings never sound good when you (as in one, not as in Leah) pull them out of context.

Oh, and I like Tyops, too.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I never get any good Tyops.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Glamour! Please don't abandon glamour!

Also, although it's repetitive, I enjoy the gradual emergence of names for the hitherto nameless: who knew that that's how it works?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

For some reason that's a bug feature of this book; I have to go hunt every name down with a big stick. Go figure. *g*

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Stuntwriting, for reals. It's the kind of thing people don't notice overtly, but it's there to underscore an emotion, and that is awesome and stuff.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hee -- Unnecessary Stuntwriting was sort of a one-time-only for last night, but I can bring that back if I do any more.

(And yeah. It's subtle, but the...hum of it. It contributes.)

[clarentine]

Apparently I'm the only one who enjoys reading the mean things. >:-)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I admit I tend to feel bad when I've been writing transitions and stuff and don't actually have anything appropriately mean.

[clarentine]

One of the things I noticed while working in novel_in_90 is that I developed a habit of writing to the structure - where I had never before had a habit of short chapters, I was tending toward shorter chapters with breaks that coincided with the 750 word goal. I also noticed the breaks were often more cliffhanger-y. That's also where my metrics tended to have reliable mean things to describe. *g*

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

It gives me joy. :D