leahbobet | Entries tagged with fabulous scott pilgrim lifestyle

June 4, 2012 Progress Notes:

"Left-Hand Rule"

Words today: 200.
Words total: 650.
Reason for stopping: Just a taste, a little nudge before I go to bed.

Darling du Jour: They get back to the apartment in a tumble of sneakers: Swift's grass-green Chucks on top of Humble's beat-up black runners, and Archie's doodle-covered Keds off to the side.
Mean Things: Rain. Your best friend and your roommate liking each other more than you. .

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: Geoff Ryman, The King's Last Song.

Barely anything, honestly, since today was so full: other-project words, magazine work, poetry galleys, a shift at the bookstore, political-project copyediting, a hot yoga class down in Liberty Village; and then a long walk back up from there through Queen West to Kensington, and Korean cold noodles for (very late) dinner, eaten with a book propped open on the table. And then back home to answer e-mail and have a very hot shower and, well. These words.

I just wanted to make them tonight. Even if I only get to make a little bit.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: The Tragically Hip -- Ahead By a Century

April 6, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 200.
Words total: 19,100.
Reason for stopping: It's really, really late.

Darling du Jour: N/A. Really, I'm mostly revising here.

Words Hallie Won't Admit to Knowing: N/A.
Mean Things: N/A.

Research Roundup: Barley ears, visual reference.
Books in progress: Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl.

Technically this is still my week off when I'm not supposed to be doing work. It's working: I can tell my brain is growing back, because I have the energy and drive again to do things like real, actual cooking, housecleaning, and coming up with ridiculous outsized ideas that are worthy of caper movie plots. More to the point, I'm doing all these things and not resenting them. The giant pot of chili I'm going to make tomorrow is making me happy already.

But even in a relatively collapsed state, I'm getting slowly used to this whole I Am A Full-Time Writer thing, and I think I like it very much.

Today, for example:

Slept until about 11:30, after being up late doing laundry and roasting a duck and whatnot. Fixed myself a salad for lunch (spinach and a bit of red onion from the CSA, white button mushrooms, sliced strawberries, homebrew balsamic dressing, cold roasted duck leftover from last night's escapade) and settled in to answer businessy e-mail and write up a guest post or two. After which I headed out to the ROM to meet a friend for previously scheduled half-price night museuming, and the rest was coffee in the sun and a really excessive examination of the South Asian/Middle Eastern/Egyptian galleries, dinner at Mother's Dumplings, tiny red velvet cupcakes, and wandering the laneways under bright chilly stars, looking for good artsy garages with interesting graffiti.

And then I came home, and stretched out on the couch with a pot of grapefruit eucalyptus tea, and made wordcount in the post-midnight quiet.

It won't be this all the time. Tonight was a little too expensive for that, even sticking to budget fun venues, and more work needs to get done in general than got done today, especially once deadlines come back into play. But I have a feeling I will fight like hell to keep days like this in my life. I will fight for them as cool and unstoppable as an avalanche.

Feet sore, and tea's cooling. G'night, Internet.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Mark Lanegan -- Fix

April 3, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 450.
Words total: 18,900.
Reason for stopping: That's combing back through the first chapter and adding the things that need adding. Also, it is cold in here and I can't feel my fingers. And I need to make some dinner.

Darling du Jour: There's a trick to seeing double: the thing you half-remember and the thing walking toward you, moving side by side against the sunset as if they were hand in hand.

Words Hallie Won't Admit to Knowing: N/A.
Mean Things: Taking all the emotional content I had lurking about in the subtext and slamming it right onto the page, fears and doubts and shudders and all. This is what people mean when they say you need a stronger emotional hook, sometimes. Blooood.

Research Roundup: Topography of Michigan.
Books in progress: Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl.

I have told myself (and notably,

cszego has told me with a certain degree of firmness) that I am to be taking this week off. I spent the last six weeks running so hard that I wasn't just burning the candle at both ends, I'd given up on that inefficient shit and just threw the whole thing in a volcano. And I need time to recover, and sleep, and get my laundry washed and dishes done and life centred again.

Except I went to pay the phone bill this afternoon, and there was money in my bank account: The first semi-monthly instalment of the Ontario Arts Council grant I'm going to be living on for the next six months.

And I was abruptly reminded why I'm here, in my pajama pants and a floppy Ideomancer tee-shirt, under a fleecy blanket on my living room couch (it's really, really cold in this apartment today), drinking a whole pot of rooibos at three in the afternoon. Why nobody's rushing me, and everything's quiet 'cept the washing machine. What I am here for.

It didn't feel like guilt, or pressure. It felt like mission. Like...vocation.

So, y'know. Words. Feels good.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: N/A

April 1, 2012 Progress Notes:

Light (bad working title)

Words today: 200.
Words total: 3800.
Reason for stopping: That was all blood. And I'm getting hungry.

Darling du Jour: The worst of it, here, was how the wind smelled wrong. It came whistling between the buildings wet as a rag stuffed in your mouth and clogged your ears like strep throat, and even if she'd known the blossoms and smoke it carried, she couldn't have pronounced their names.
Mean Things: I am doing a horrible thing in the story I'm telling right now. I only hope the result vindicates, because otherwise, seriously, we'll need to pass a hat and buy me a new soul.

Research Roundup: The Don River system; flora and fauna of the Republic of Georgia; terrain at Yonge and the 401; a Georgian-language translator. Have I mentioned I'm doing a horrible thing?
Books in progress: Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl.

Things that happened this week:

So today, Above is out in the US. Pre-game show is officially over. Fly free, little book.

Friday was my last day at the Dayjob. I have been quiet about it, mostly because I've been too busy to blog (or think, or breathe, or sleep) for about six weeks now, but I got some arts grants this spring, for two different projects: this one and On Roadstead Farm. And so I am going to be a full-time writer for a year while I write those things.

And then? Who knows what happens?

The third thing: Friday night I was out for celebratory drinks with friends, and I came home utterly weaving drunk and wanted nothing but to write and write and write. And last night I was out at the movies and then dinner and rambling 'til two in the morning, and came home wanting nothing but to write and write, with the feel of close-passing trains rumbling around in my belly.

Finally I've had an edge of sleep, and all I want to do is write.

I'm going to ride this as long as I have it. Or as long as it takes. It's midafternoon and I'm possessed and addled with fiction like I haven't had a chance to be in months. Okay, fiction. Come on in. Hit me.

Happy April. Happy afternoon.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: The Darcys -- Shaking Down the Old Bones

So, this.

A blurry cameraphone picture, yeah. Of Above, on the shelving cart at the bookstore, taken tonight after work, as

cszego e-mailed me this afternoon to let me know it is in. The Canadian release date is March 1, so that's par for the course, pretty much (Americans wait until April).

sandwichboy owns the first copy ever.

dolphin__girl owns the second.

--

This is the thing in my head right now.

--

Officially: Guys, here's the thing I made. It has been, bar none, the beautifullest trial of my life.

I hope it speaks, if and when you listen.

Current Mood: loved
Current Music: Matthew Good -- A Single Explosion

February 26, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 600 (and then 250 more after dinner).
Words total: ~~18,100.~~ 18,350.
Reason for stopping: I don't actually want to stop; it's all hot and alive in my head. But I've run out of things to add tonight.

Darling du Jour: The rage doused like it'd stumbled through a rainstorm.
Words Hallie Won't Admit to Knowing: coalesced.
Mean Things: A confirmation that indeed, scary shit is afoot.

Research Roundup: Fiberglass composite pilings, and their lifespan.
Books in progress: China Mieville, Embassytown.

Sleepy sleepy Sunday. I am making bread, and drinking cherry rose rooibos (which I think is courtesy of Jana, from a birthday or Christmas present), and thinking what to do with beets, since I have tons of farmshare beets and need a dinner sooner or later. The inbox is tolerably tidy again. It's being one of those good Fake Freelance Lifestyle days.

The big news around the house this week: Fake Freelance Lifestyle is soon to become Real Freelance Lifestyle. Back in October, that Ontario Arts Council works in progress grant I applied for?

Well. I got it.

I will have a month more at The Dayjob, and then my job will be to write this book through the spring and summer.

And after that? Who knows? But I have this distinct feeling that it'll be one hell of an adventure.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Mark Lanegan -- Fix

February 6, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 300.
Words total: 15,150.
Reason for stopping: Some cooking I want to do before bed.

Darling du Jour: The irregular sound, unpatterned, leaked through the floorboards harder, and louder, and worse.
Words Hallie Won't Admit to Knowing: deserted.
Mean Things: Having to hear someone else's grief and not being able to do jack about it.

Research Roundup: N/A. Lots of transitions today, really
Books in progress:

jmeadows, Incarnate.

I think the world is trying to throw itself between me and getting any writing done. Life was never this complicated before. Wages of an actual social life, or real responsibilities, or maybe this is just what they mean by Growing Up. Maybe you see the threads and turns of everything, that much more.

(Yes, I am 29 years old. I am still Growing Up.)

I think I miss Vancouver.

Otherwise: Winter farmshare started last week, and I have been cooking. Dinner tonight was Hungarian cabbage noodles, as I have a cabbage. In a moment I'm going to rig up some quick potato salad with green beans and farm eggs and maybe leek, to use some small potatoes and for my lunch tomorrow. This means I'm effectively cooking seasonal right now, which will help when I get this book into winter. There's an amazing amount of logistics to feeding a farm family through to spring when you don't have refrigeration. It's humbling.

Also, various book news of various sorts, but I'll save it for tomorrow. It's 10:30. I don't expect any of you to be reading LJ at the moment. So. Book news things tomorrow.

Current Mood: moody
Current Music: Matthew Good -- Advertising on Police Cars (acoustic)