Drowning Nor Waving

March 20, 2016 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 500.
Words total: 18,800.
Reason for stopping: Bed.

Darling du Jour: "I know." He shakes his head, dislodging the last, light fingernails of those memories. "I know. Really."

Research Roundup: Pliés; whether the plowshare parable is functional in Asia.

Books in progress: Amanda Sun, Heir to the Sky.

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Long, quiet afternoon and evening. It's the first Sunday I've had free in about three weeks, and we made the most of it: A very thorough home-cooked brunch, a long walk around the neighbourhood, in the sun, a generous helping of laundry, and then off to our quiet corners to make some art.

Homemade Brunch Club returns with a bang: Eggs Blackstone with chive hollandaise and capers atop homemade rosemary-date bread; spinach-pear-cucumber salad with lemon-honey dressing; stovetop garam masala coffee. This is my first Sunday off in three weeks. I'm going to enjoy this. :)

A photo posted by Leah Bobet (@leahbobet) on Mar 20, 2016 at 12:13pm PDT

March 14, 2016 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 100 on Friday night, 600 tonight.
Words total: 17,700.
Reason for stopping: Sleeeep.

Darling du Jour: None of this is real, I think, like a ritual, and then the first gust of wind hits ROBOTNAME and rocks us, twinned, back in our harnesses, and it is. It is absolutely real.

Research Roundup: N/A.

Books in progress: Amanda Sun, Heir to the Sky.

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As you can tell, this is still rife with placeholder nouns. Eh, it's a draft.

Bed. Bed bed bed.

March 9, 2016 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 100 last night, 850 tonight.
Words total: 15,950.
Reason for stopping: Bedtime.

Darling du Jour: Miles and miles of scaffolds and sparks arc through the air, and at their centres, crouched down and still big as the sky, are the robots.

Research Roundup: Local food of Hokkaido; earthquake-proof construction techniques.

Books in progress: Amanda Sun, Heir to the Sky; Lena Coakley, Worlds of Ink and Shadow.

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It is a good feeling when after a day of not doing much at all (I didn't get a day off this weekend, and I won't next, so I forced myself to schedule one in between) I open a manuscript thinking there's nothing to say to it tonight, and almost a thousand words fall out.

Not the places I thought I'd be working tonight: a lot of fleshing out of a sequence that goes midway in the first third, and sending a few little tendrils from it into the last third of the book. Setting setting setting. Setting, and some relationship establishment.

I might need to name a few more pilots at this point. The placeholder NAME things are getting intrusive.

March 3, 2016 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 500.
Words total: 14,600.
Reason for stopping: Really feverish all of a sudden.

Darling du Jour: N/A.

Research Roundup: N/A

Books in progress: Amanda Sun, Heir to the Sky; Lena Coakley, Worlds of Ink and Shadow.

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My preferred activity today would have been to eat chocolate and have a Swedish indie pop dance party, but. Adulting.

Weirdly enough, given the implied violence and the way the lyrics are way possessive, this is giving me a ridiculous amount of joy today.

I just love the FML look he gets when the clock hits five. I love the microsecond of desperate self-loathing when he stares at that button. In fact, I love the expressiveness of the lead actor in general. He's unpretty and amazingly emotive and a fantastic dancer, and I need to find what else he's done.

February 24, 2016 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 400.
Words total: 13,500.
Reason for stopping: Went on and off on this tonight, but now it is time for bed.

Darling du Jour: Cranes and scaffolds sprout from the edge like metal bandages, holding back dirt, rubble, and slime from the chaotic crater floor.

Research Roundup: The biology of fight-or-flight responses.

Books in progress: Amanda Sun, Heir to the Sky.

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A few hundred words down after a morning and afternoon mostly thrown to the jaws of paperwork, and an evening thrown to the jaws of spaghetti bolognese from scratch. Writing date tomorrow at the tea shop, so tomorrow should have more.

February 18, 2016 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 500.
Words total: 12,700.
Reason for stopping: Time to start dinner; company coming over tonight.

Darling du Jour: A pair of single beds, the right tight-sheeted, the left a rumpled curve of shed blanket-cocoon; a pair of desks, the right empty, polished wood and the left a riot of pens, chargers, and teacups, with a double row of plushies along its back end, standing guard.

Research Roundup: Tottori Prefecture and its geography (the name functionally translates to "birdcatcher prefecture"); the Chūgoku Mountains.

Books in progress: Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

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Today's achievement: finding a concrete location for the Pacific Compact Battle School, in more detail than "somewhere in southern Japan". Also a bunch of email and bookkeeping. The Meyers-Briggs test that split working in the arts and arts admin -- and sorted me into arts admin -- in Grade 9 had no idea how much email and bookkeeping are forever with us.

Friends coming over for dinner, avec wine. Time for me to start the soup.

December 17, 2015 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 300.
Words total: 10,400.
Reason for stopping: It is late and I want to stretch my sore hip and read Illuminae.

Darling du Jour: N/A.

Research Roundup: Common Japanese surnames and their etymology.

Books in progress: John Lorinc, Michael McClelland, Ellen Scheinberg, and Tatum Taylor, The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood.

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Mostly worldbuilding and notes and figuring out arcs today, with a break to get all the groceries. Difficult book is difficult. But I am pretty sure these persimmons will help me with that.

December 2, 2015 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 800.
Words total: 9,350.
Reason for stopping: Some freelance to do today, and then a Christmas party in the evening, so it's time to move on.

Darling du Jour: The same look in her eyes as that boy on the train: I am magical and frightening and can make anything happen.

Research Roundup: The Bolshoi Ballet School; good tech universities in Japan; degrees needed for NGO careers; turnip harvesting season; spoken Ainu language.

Books in progress: Christopher Barzak, Wonders of the Invisible World.

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Have clawed and fought and wrestled my way back to this through a pile of basically every other obligation on Earth. There's a lot to be said for a half-empty inbox and an empty house and a good sunbeam coming in your office window.

I think I found the last line today. It's good. :)

September 29, 2015 Progress Notes:

The Robot Monuments

Words today: 600.
Words total: 8,050.
Reason for stopping: Sleep time. Big day tomorrow, lots to do.

Darling du Jour: She thinks of fish fins, flickering just enough to push the body along. Darting in and out of the current at will, tasting ocean. Exploring.

Research Roundup: N/A.

Books in progress: China Mieville, Three Moments of an Explosion.

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I can only work on this when I'm quiet, apparently -- quiet inside and out -- and I've hit the hump with the launch for An Inheritance of Ashes where there's still a whole lot to do before the book hits shelves (and even more through the fall and winter in terms of appearances and travel) but a lot of it is starting to show results. I did my first Word on the Street Festival as an author as well as a reader Sunday. The two-week blog tour is rolling out. Over half of the trade reviews are in (and pretty nicely complimentary, which was very reassuring).

By the end of the night, I'm still tired, but there's a little space of quiet in my head, and there is drafting again.

#

I don't understand my male protagonist very well yet -- he still hasn't stepped forward with a name -- but I think I've got my female protagonist down just fine. Mostly her tonight, subtexting away. This is growing in shards, just like Errantry did; either that's the process right now or the upshot of my completely scattered attention. Either way, going to keep building it like a pearl. Bits on layers.

Goodnight. :)