Drowning Nor Waving

Today thesandtiger and I went to the One of a Kind show and goofed around and bought a bunch of fancy stuff for about twice what we told ourselves we'd spend, as is the tradition of our people. I didn't document the craft show haul last year, but we will rectify that shit today.

Gifts
-- Hairclip for one friend who will, I think, love it.
-- Small hand mirror for another friend as a part gift.

Edibles
-- A bottle of maple sugar. I plan to do wicked things to baked apples with this.
-- Two vacuum-sealed bags of Indian candy, aka candied salmon. I, um, already ate one.
-- Two jars lavender honey from Prince Edward County.
-- Two bottles apple cranberry vinegar.
-- One bottle honey vinegar. Yes, that's vinegared mead. It's amazing.
-- One container maple salt, because I finished the container dolphin__girl gave me for Christmas last year and I like putting it in my bread.

Base personal spoilage
-- Another of those hand mirrors, because it was adorable and I needed one, or a compact or something, to keep in my purse.
-- Three fridge magnets from the same place. One has a little cartoon pufferfish on it and says "Breathe". Hee. Also, a requisite "Make Art Not War" one, because I am still at least 18% hippie and my household should reflect this.
-- Two absolutely breathtaking shirts from Yasmine Louis, who I bought a hoodie from this spring which I love with all the love in the wide world. I even wrote a post at Make Awesome Sauce about her, back when that project lived and I was blogging for it. They are beautiful and I love them and I think I fangirled her embarrassingly.
-- A hat from Lilliput, because clearly hats were something that were in severe deficit in this house. It is one of those ones that are like newsboy caps with the brim out front, but not so round and flatter, and it is a lovely dark purple felt. It makes me look trendy and sharp and rakish and awesomely disreputable. Lock up your bespectacled hipster menfolk, Internet.

There were a couple other things we tried on -- dresses and the like -- which were nice, but weren't $200 (or whatever) nice, and a lovely green ring I didn't go back for after all, and beeswax candles I just plain forgot to pick up, and I was sort of hoping for something feathery to put in my hair. Also sort of failed at holiday gifts for friends, which is always our cover story for going to this thing, but still. This was a serious and deeply respectable haul.

The other thing with going to the craft show? Anything preserved or knitted elicits this automatic Let's see if I can make that reaction from me now: I look it over, counting stitches, checking on construction, inspecting the fiber. And mostly, on the theoretical level, I can make most of this stuff; it'd just be time and work and patience.

And then I want to. I want to knit and knead and pick out words for poetry so bad my hands twitch.

So I am home, surrounded by goodies, and deeply inspired to make: make food, make hats and gloves and sweaters, make paper, make seedlings, make words. And this is why I love going to this thing, aside from the regular stereotypes about girls and shopping: the work of our hands is kind of amazing. All those people living off, fully or partially, the work of their hands is amazing. And even if it's a little thing, at this time of year, it holds back the dark.

And this got stealthily profound, so I'm off to start some bread and clean the bathroom with the radio up loud, because there is entropy to fight, in that implacable way one does.

March 20, 2010 Progress Notes:

"Stay"

Words today: 600.
Words total: 7900. Yeah, this doesn't match, but my math got mussed somewhere.
Reason for stopping: I'm on the last scene, I'm a bit stuck, it's 11:00, and I want to knit and watch cartoons. I'll finish the story tomorrow.

Darling du Jour: "I looked into his eyes," she said, swallowing back the thought of fingers snapped at the bottommost joint, of intestines looped and gnawed, teethmarks like wolves'.

Mean Things: Dem bones dem bones dem huuuuman bones. Sometimes taking the high road really sucks balls.
Research Roundup: Dene family names -- needed one more -- and whether I can attest a traditional Dene cure for wendigoes. It's looking like that's a no.

Books in progress: Gemma Files, A Book of Tongues.
The glamour: Went to Christian Cameron's book launch this afternoon at the bookstore, before which I picked up some size 15 straight needles for the shawl I want to knit and after which, I had dinner at Fresh with thesandtiger. Getting a table at Fresh is an accomplishment these days.

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Just a very little bit to go on this, but it requires an emotional intensity and care I don't actually have after a full day out and about. I'm out most of tomorrow too, but there should be enough left in the tank after that to finish this one off. It's officially too long for the anthology it was supposed to go to, so hopefully I can manage some cuts in the second draft. Or I'll have to write him another story inside five weeks. Erk.

(Ladies and gents, the glamorous writing life.)

Laptop Debt Kill:

8950 / 17000 words. 53% done!

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.

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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.

Out this afternoon/evening at the ChiZine Publications double-barrelled two-part book launch -- one at the bookstore, one at The Central on Markham -- wherein I saw a good bucket of people, conversed on subjects from publishing in general to the difference between swear words in Quebecois French and France French to how Lester B. Pearson is a superhero but nobody seems to realize it, and had a nice cup of tea (Tuscany Pear). In between these things was dinner with devils_exercise and Karen and friends of theirs who have the awesomest 13-year-old daughter, and a trip to Romni, where yarn fell into my bag and money fell out. Oops.

(This was technically only half a yarn accident: I had gone specifically for the bamboo stuff I bought and saw Fitted Knits there and had already decided I wanted it, so that was fine. It's the two skeins of Punta Yarns Merisock at $20 a skein that brings the accident into yarn accident. It was really, really blue. I couldn't help it. It just happened.)

Headed home because it was stuffy and I was getting a monster headache, but I seem to actually like and enjoy extended bouts of social these days. Go figure.

And now, going to make some hot chocolate, take something to stave off the headache, and see if I can't squeeze some words out. Stay tuned.

I have been working on (or ripping back, or fixing, or swearing at, or throwing under the couch for a month and ignoring spitefully) my Ms. Marigold sweater since the middle of February of this year.

No longer!









(Yes, there is a towel on my bedroom floor. Don't judge me!)

Considering how much hatred poured between me and this project in a glowing, red-eyed circuit of disdain, it actually looks pretty damn hot and fits really nicely. The sweater will now happily live out its days in circulation with my winter clothes, shedding red baby alpaca fibers on everything with which it comes into contact.

They took a long time. But they are warm.

Next, I return to the scene of my unfinished sweater and conquer that shit.

The balance of this evening has been spent in:

1) Knitting my socks; and
2) Mainlining the first season of Slings and Arrows.

Results?

1) My socks now have heels and go up to the ankle and are in the home stretch;
2) Paul Gross is proof that this is in fact a loving universe;
3) And oh my God I miss doing theatre.*

I wonder if I can clone myself, bend time, and find myself a community company...

*Yes, folks, she used to do theatre. Had a killer Lady Capulet, too.

August 17, 2009 Progress Notes:

Saturnalia

Words today: 600.
Words total: 8900.
Reason for stopping: I actually overshot the goal by a touch, and it's the inevitable 1:00 am.

Darling du Jour: Her throat worked. He could see the veins in it through the skin, blue as her chipped nailpolish, cradling the tendons of her neck like creeping ivy.

Things Yet to Cough Up Their Names: The Pendulum's owner, who apparently owes Zeke precisely two favours (Mercutio Walker); the band name Zeke and Gregory have been gigging under; Gregory and Zeke's once very Art-Deco and trendy, now hopelessly run-down and seedy but still kind of awesome neighbourhood.
Gratuitous Baby-Eating References Inserted Into Scene: One (1).
Mean Things: That kind of cleaning crisis where you're fine living in filth usually, and then a cute girl shows up and you're edging the dirty socks under the couch and feeling absurdly, embarrassingly like your mother.
Research Roundup: Traditional anniversary gifts; Mercury and Roman gods of hospitality;
crossroads myths.

Books in progress: Daniel Rabuzzi, The Choir Boats; William Gibson, Spook Country.
The glamour: Some businessy stuff that I wanted to turn around quick. Also, this evening was my annual rewatching of The Princess Bride while sacked out on the couch knitting my socks. At this advanced age I can see just how middling the production quality of the thing is, and yet I completely don't care. :)

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This is probably more work than it looks like, even though I did spend the better part of my evening watching TVlike objects and knitting (which is the only way I can not get restless and feel like I'm dicking around while watching TVlike objects). Some small but non-trivial plotting for the next chapter or two went in tonight, as well as two little revelations that I thought of half-asleep on alternate nights this weekend, structural things. Next, we stir.

I am finding myself absurdly grateful for my random OCD need to do these very metrics posts. I spent a bit of tonight charting the work gap and habits for Above, and then looking at where I've started and stopped with Saturnalia. Apparently when I was writing Above I slapped down 10k and then just ignored it for six months. This gives me a better idea of what to expect around these parts, although I hope this time it doesn't take six months.

Civ4 is proving eminently distracting. I may have an O Lord, What Have I Done? moment if it keeps up through the week. 0.0

Bed now. Dayjob tomorrow. No rest for the wicked past her 8:00 alarm.