leahbobet | Entries tagged with this is our life

July 2, 2013 Progress Notes:

"The Catalogue of Good Days"

Words today: 200 one day this weekend, 800 today.
Words total: 2750.
Reason for stopping: Bed.

Darling du Jour: N/A

Mean Things: Aw, you broke the magic stuff.

Research Roundup: The glass floor at the CN Tower, and the outdoor observation deck. Good running form. What colour the track outside Central Tech is, because I can't remember.
Books in progress: Amanda Sun, Ink.

Had a surprisingly busy long weekend: Work; a trip to Ikea with P. on Saturday night so we could get a dresser, stop living out of the laundry basket, and thus petition for readmittance into adulthood; the board games afternoon he hosts one Sunday a month; and finally reorganizing our kitchen to integrate his dishes and mine on Monday, followed by a pressure headache and a serious flop. And then the plumber came this morning, to fix the leak in the kitchen ceiling. The kitchen ceiling isn't leaking anymore. But he'll have to come back to deal with the bathroom sink's pipes, which are also leaking (hooray).

Okay, yeah. No wonder I'm tired.

I blew off a meeting tonight to make the space to write these words. Hopefully I won't have to do it again tomorrow.

Current Mood: tired

May 27, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 2,000.
Words total: 75,300.
Reason for stopping: P. is home from work with lasagna, it's cold, and my hands are starting to curl up from typing.

Darling du Jour: The silence ate the whole room: the twig-fire, the squeak of my stool, Heron's laboured breath. We stared at each other in the darkness, imagining colour. Imagining the world's end. Listening for rain.

Mean Things: Being not listened to by a bunch of teenagers; lies, lies, lies; an eviction that, in retrospect, is totally called for; the hammer of adult disapproval crashing down on your stupid irresponsible hijinks.

Research Roundup: Carding wool; what a baby's kick feels like.
Books in progress:

matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

Last night's quick snack was delicious: P. made us brie-stuffed dates with smoked ham around them, and said he would make them again but next time with balsamic vinegar. I'm going to go into Photoshop and make him a Best Person award for May 2013.

The main event: YE OLDE TALE OF PEOPLE GETTING INTO EACH OTHER'S BUSINESS (ALSO MONSTERS).

Today's been a short trip back over Chapter 14, to tweak and futz and put in those missing transitions, and then a push forward into Chapters 15 and 16, and some climactic scenes later when I ran dry on those. Another thousand words or so deleted out and thrown to the wind, too, which probably explains why my hands hurt so much. If I'm going to be doing this at a hardcore pace, there needs to be stretching in the mornings.

Okay. Dinner, and a hot shower too. We'll see if there's any ancillary/cleanup stuff to do once those things are accomplished.

Current Mood: driven
Current Music: N/A

May 26, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 2,200.
Words total: 73,300.
Reason for stopping: I've been at this all day, and it's past two.

Darling du Jour: The sheep hopped over it as if it were nothing: delicately placing each foot on the drifts and sinking, startled, in. They milled, confused, on the strand and the river road, not quite understanding where their soft pasture had gone. They reminded me of Marthe: constantly bewildered that the ground wasn't where they'd left it.

Mean Things: Not having shared a piece of information for fear people will think you're crazy, and the first response you get is...well; shit getting most positively real; being informed you're bad at sneaking; something more, and more important, to lose.

Research Roundup: What lizards eat; a summer sausage recipe; winter grazing of sheep.
Books in progress:

matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

Took yesterday off for a bookstore shift, a grocery run, and an evening field trip with P.'s workfriends to the David Dunlap Observatory to look through a 1930s-built (!), 74-inch telescope (!!) at Saturn (!!!). The first person to spot the rings on Saturn must have utterly lost their mind, because guys, I nearly did.

But today we are back to YE OLDE TALE OF PEOPLE GETTING INTO EACH OTHER'S BUSINESS (ALSO MONSTERS).

Pretty much put paid to Chapter 14 today (still needs a few transitions), and did some forward framing work on Chapter 15 and beyond, into the climax. I made up an awesome creepy monster, and did as good writing advice told me and Burned Plot. Also finally found a place for a scenelet I wrote as one of the first things, period, on this book, over a year and a half ago. It's nice that that won't have to go in the bin.

Best thing? I figured out how they solve this thing. Using monster physics and something I put there a year ago just because I thought it was cool. Booyah.

More trash has come out of the file, too; probably another thousand words' worth of old ideas and wrong directions and stuff there just isn't a place for anymore. So realistically I probably did half again this number today to make up for it, but for accountability's sake, we're only going to count what takes us forward.

Okay. Time for a quick snack. And then time for bed.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: N/A

Longtime readers will know that it is officially spring in my house when I get the inexorable urge to put on The Sisters of Mercy’s Floodland, open all the windows, clean house, and dance around in my socks. This, um. Happens every year.

Apparently I was late on it this year, because I was all the way to the white house in the red square before I realized I was humming it to myself. With the window open. Making bread.

So apparently it’s spring, guys. Happy spring!

Originally published at leahbobet. You can comment here or there.

A long sleep-in after a cozy New Year's party; blackberry pancakes for breakfast; a quiet afternoon reading and tidying up; a work date with the boyfriend; words written for ON ROADSTEAD FARM, and some on a short story besides; St. Lawrence Market pierogies and a spinach salad for dinner; a clear sky, a telescope, and the stars.

Sounds about right.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: P.'s office
Current Music: Ohbijou -- Blizzards

October 17, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 600, and 700 in rescue verbiage from the old file.
Words total: 46,400 (shockingly, still wrong; I haven't gotten to tidying out the garbage words yet. Someday.)
Reason for stopping: Over quota, we are out of coffee and battery, and I have to head homeward to start dinner nom nom.

Motivational Threat of the Day: None, alas. But I'm running mostly on positive woot! energy today.

Darling du Jour: I rubbed my bandaged hand behind my back, and thought, This is too big. It was bigger than the walls of the dusty, close smokehouse; than the lines of our crooked fields; than the curve of the river that held them separate from the hills and forests north.
There was something going on here that was bigger than my whole world.
Mean Things: Complicated feels are complicated. Touching the edge of someone else's world-changing quest, and having the size of your world blown apart by that. Someone asking, without knowing, the hardest question. Being certain that you can never go home.

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: Tiffany Trent, The Unnaturalists

Written partially this morning, and partially on an impromptu work date with

subject_zero, who is back home after a year-plus in British Columbia. We have a cushy table at CSI on Bathurst, and cucumber water, and a lot (a lot) of coffee and article-writing, fiction-writing, chat about his graphic design and doing social media for record releases and musician friends, and it's sort of like he wasn't gone for a year at all.

It's kind of weird and fascinating how I Know People Who Do Things, mostly by virtue of the fact that a lot of people I hung out with when I was sixteen or seventeen or twenty just...we all went and started Doing Things. And made sure we didn't lose touch. And now there's this weird illusion of cool and connectivity, because...a guy who I used to lightsaber-duel with in parking lots on Eglinton East and attack with Boston Cream filling at Tim Hortons is now an indie musician and mixes albums.

Go figure.

And now I am going to head home, because the uncanny Mr. P. is coming over for dinner, and I am going to make potatoes and stuffed mushrooms and steamed greens and duck for us to eat.*

*I like how I can be an awesome girlfriend just by virtue of cooking the things I want to eat for dinner anyways. Win!

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: CSI Annex
Current Music: N/A

October 14, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 250, and 200 extracurriclar words on The Wrong Book.
Words total: 45,200 (wrong).
Reason for stopping: They are kicking us out of the coffeeshop. I'll finish up to hit quota later.

Motivational Threat of the Day: From P, who is reading Hitchhiker's across from me: "If you do not write 500 words, you will be implicated in the theft of a hat."

Darling du Jour: Just a knife, as harmless and unmoving as a wasp's nest. As legions of generals, veterans, governors and frantic protectorate councils descending upon the edges of our sleepy riverside farm, sifting for any trace of the vanished John Balsam. Their God-slaying hero, who, unknown and unhallowed, had known how to make death fall.
Mean Things: We made some progress on why our antagonist did what he did, and oh. Asphodel, you stupid, stupid, sad bastard.

Research Roundup: Suburbs of Atlanta.
Books in progress: Jean Little, From Anna

Written at Balluchon on planned work date, where

sora_blue is also writing, and P. is by turns reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and doing some impromptu sketching. It is a rainy October Sunday. We have coffee and pastry and all is good in life.

Didn't hit quota yet, but there is later tonight; going to take another run at this when I'm home.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Balluchon

October 9, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 100 earlier this week sometime, 800 today.
Words total: 44,450 (wrong).
Reason for stopping: Chapter, and I need to devote some attention to updating the synopsis.

Motivational Threat of the Day: From the munificent P.: "If you don't write 500 words, the thief from Golden Axe will steal your magic pots and then you will be a Muggle." Terrible.

Darling du Jour: The smell of bonfires followed him: sweat and the stink of feathers, curled and crisping to ash.
Mean Things: Just when you thought you'd dealt with some plot, oh shit, more plot!

Research Roundup: Historical stuffings for upholstered furniture.
Books in progress: Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Just wrapped up one of my better Thanksgiving weekends, beginning with a total Internet hiatus as of Saturday morning. Activities included a four-hour trail hike through the Don Valley in the sunshine, fancy dinner, playing Golden Axe and Streets of Rage in our pajamas, sleeping in copiously, and reading lots of fiction. It filled the soul.

So today I got my vegetables. And made caramelized onion bread. And took a long walk around the west end on the sunbeam side of the street, and washed a lot of dishes.

Synopsis time, and then maybe blueberry muffins. And bed.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Amanda Palmer -- Blake Says

August 30, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 250.
Words total: 34,900 (wrong).
Reason for stopping: Off to see the Batman.

Motivational Threat of the Day: None. Clearly today I needed it.

Darling du Jour: N/A.
Mean Things: Little bit of a class misunderstanding.

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: Sean Stewart, The Night Watch

Short wordcount today, but I am overwhelmingly quiet and moody, and P.'s response to this was to commit to:

1) Going to Batman tonight;
2) Filling me with sugar; and
3) Making me laugh, even though he has a bit of a sore throat and may not be hugely talky himself;

--which makes him best boyfriend ever for this calendar day.

So I'm going to Batman, finally. Adieu.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: N/A

August 23-24, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 300.
Words total: 31,525 (still super wrong).
Reason for stopping: God, but I'm tired.

Motivational Threat of the Day: Didn't get one today! Which must explain being 200 words short!

Darling du Jour: The week the Wicked God fell, we'd spent four full days and nights combing through the fields for bodies, guided by the crack of dying seeds. Now and then I could still remember the smell of their midsummer pyres: rot and burnt feathers, spiraling through the broken nights.
Mean Things: Danger! The scary kind!

Research Roundup: N/A
Books in progress: Sean Stewart, The Night Watch

Some of this is yesterday, some today; I went out for drinks in the evening, expecting to come home and work some more after, and it spiraled into ice cream, a walk to City Hall to see the Layton anniversary memorial with P., and crashing at his place, complete with gigantic diner breakfast this morning.

When I got home, a monarch butterfly the size of my hand landed, for an instant, in my hair as I unlocked the door.

But besides that, my throat is a little scratchy, and I am not wanting to get sick right now, and I think I might need to go to bed and throw those other 200 words I owe over for tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or when my throat doesn't hurt.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Daniel Duff -- Landmark

August 13, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 800.
Words total: 30,225.
Reason for stopping: The people here have kindly let me sit and type since about 12:30pm. That is a long time to take up someone's cafe table. Also, I want to go home and make orange zucchini loaf.

Motivational Threat of the Day: From the most eminent P: "If you don't write 500 words today, the Bond villain chef from Sweet Genius will--" --which he then left ominously hanging as I trembled with fear.

Darling du Jour: The stars are falling, I thought, and opened my eyes.
Mean Things: Funeral dynamics such that you don't even get to give your condolences. Missing one's best friend very badly. Finding not awesome personal friendship outside your window, but spiderbirds. Disappearing corpses; never a good sign, really. Another of those figurative things becoming literal which sucks for the person it's describing. Entropy trying to entropize your house.

Research Roundup: Suburbs of Windsor; agricultural products of Essex county; sparrow reference photos; asphodels.
Books in progress: Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man

Not enough verbiage yesterday to merit a post: maybe 100 of the words I'm logging now. Instead, there was a good solid sleep-in, French toast for breakfast, general afternoon downtime, and one (1) set of jazz at the Rex. My brain is feeling nicely fueled up.

I'm adding a new metric, the Motivational Threat of the Day, because the last few days

sora_blue has, shall we say, encouraged my writing through the application of possible consequences. Like, for example, "If you don't write 500 words, somewhere a puppy will not get to play with its ball."

This, um. Works. Also it's kind of funny as hell.

Now that P's gotten in on the act* (thaaaanks, guys), this probably merits a metric. Horrible earth-shaking threats will be reported as they arrive.

And now, I have been here all day, so I'm going home to bake.

*To be fair, I told him that if he didn't animate the amount of game characters that need animation today, a Rahonavis would come kidnap the basil plant he's growing on his balcony and put it in dinosaur salad. So.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: One Hour Cafeteria
Current Music: not-bad Japanese pop

August 7, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 250.
Words total: 27,825.
Reason for stopping: It's late, and it's bedtime.

Darling du Jour: "Pride's the Hoffmann failing," he said, and I drew myself up full before I realized that saying one word in my own defense would just prove James Blakely's point entirely and in full.

Mean Things: Saying something you know is going to hear the listener, but it's necessary.

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: Gemma Files, A Tree of Bones

Not much verbiage, but this is a dip back in after taking the weekend off:

ksumnersmith's most excellent wedding on Saturday, the giant dinosaurs special exhibit and staying up late to watch the Mars landing on Sunday, and just general downtime on the holiday Monday, plus one very nice Italian dinner and night walk to the Distillery District and back.

I think this might be stable enough, at this point, to take a regular daily wordcount. Going to try for 500, I think, and see how that flies. Yes, this is my process. Do not try this at home.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Cold Specks -- The Mark

June 17, 2012 Progress Notes:

"Wild Card"

Words today: 800.
Words total: 7300.
Reason for stopping: Friends are in from Seattle, and we are having high tea.

Books in progress: Ross Macdonald, The Chill.

Establishing a small semblance of normalcy again this afternoon: volunteer stuff, and cooking (scrambled duck eggs with onions and chanterelles and kale and cherry tomatoes and cheese), and writing words. Not a concert was gone to this day.

My legs are killing me, and my ears are still a touch crackly, and I think I blew my voice last night at Limblifter. :)

NXNE Day 4 report to come later tonight or tomorrow afternoon, when I'm more caught up on everything else.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Limblifter -- Vicious

May 15-16, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Just like the title says. I did work all day yesterday, and the most part of today too. At this point, we're looking at definitely negative words -- I've sliced something like 2,000 or more, and added...okay, who even knows? It's all just a ball o' confusion over here.

Book proposals. It's a thing. Another skill to learn.

If I couldn't actively feel the thing getting better with each pass, each iteration? I'd probably be going out of my skin.

Otherwise? All work and no play makes Leah a dull girl. I did not go to a food security lecture today, and I am not going to that noon yoga class tomorrow, mostly because I want this finished by tomorrow evening, when I am most definitely going to one of the many spinoffs of the Trampoline Hall pub lecture/storytelling thing, because one of Dr. My Roommate's colleagues is giving a talk on Erdos.

Time not spent writing the past few days has been spent running errands or cooking food. Time spent not doing those things has been spent curled up in bed with my laptop, watching Samurai Champloo episodes, in an attempt to cool my brain off. All very boring.

The one unboring thing? Ideomancer has made the longlist for the British Fantasy Awards this year. Yeah, it's the longlist, not the shortlist. Yeah, it's a small thing. But we're a volunteer-staffed webzine that pays all of $40 a story, and inside? I am dying with pride. :)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Daniel Duff -- Landmark

(I'm surprised. I didn't think I'd have anything to say about this.)

I am not a great observer of Valentine's Day. I'm single at the moment, and mildly scorched from my most recent escapade de coeur*, and just a little generally work-overwhelmed besides, these days. The plan for tonight was to go down to Queen and Ossington to see one of the guys from Tokyo Police Club and one of the guys from Born Ruffians play a set, but I got home and I was tired, and Dr. My Roommate was tired, so we called the whole thing off, and instead I have been curled up in my bed with a cup of spicy cherry tea, reading fiction.

Life is very busy these days, and so far for 2012, very demanding. Carving out the space to just read a whole book, cover to cover, was like being given a precious gift of quiet; an internal reprieve. For the first day in what probably feels like longer than it practically has been, I had a rest.

So that was the last Valentine's Day of my twenties.

I want to say I do not get the anti-Valentine's stuff. I feel like there was a lot of it this year, and I don't know if that's just the circles I move in, or I'm sensitized to it, or what. I can't say that: I do get it, in a lot of ways. I get lonely too. I would have enjoyed having a lap to rest my head in while I read that book tonight, and an idle kiss or two between pouring cups of tea.

Thing is, thing is; and there is always a thing, because otherwise I wouldn't have taken to my keyboard, if there wasn't a thing.

There is a danger, I think, that in rejecting being told how to love and enjoy, in rejecting what can feel like pressure and proscription and judgment, we go too far and reject the idea that really, to love and enjoy is generally a really nourishing thing to do; that in trying to wriggle out of the trap of that dominant social narrative owning us, we go all the way to the other side into anger and active rejection, and then it just owns us from the other direction. Or, in less fancy talk: All the people on my Facebook talking about how much Valentine's Day sucked were still grouped under "X many posts about Valentine's Day" when I hit the newsfeed.

I don't know what point I'm making here. Perhaps it is that love is not all, but it's not nothing. Perhaps that active, defensive rejection is not escape, but can turn into a different kind of bondage. Perhaps that you can, when you're about to turn 30, just spend the evening reading a goofy political novel and drinking tea under your comforter, and the shrieking voices that would have something to say about that and what that means, who that means you are, don't and won't actually matter if you legitimately are where you want to be.

And that doesn't mean I have to say And what of it?, and that doesn't mean I have to pretend that it makes me perfectly happy to not have that lap to rest my head in, that kiss here and there, a pair of knees tucked up behind mine like a glove. It doesn't. I miss that. I want it and feel the lack of it, and human emotion is not some either/or, binary, side-taking exercise.

We can want those things, and not have to be Unhappy People for wanting what we don't presently have. And we can spend Valentine's Day evening with a book, and feel meltingly content with it, without stacking it up, measuring-stick, against some other place or person we were Supposed To Be.

Because here is where we are, and the only real choice, in the moment, is whether we're going to be happy or sad in the place we're at.

I guess that's what I wanted to say.

*Yes, I have escapades, and escapade is usually the right word for the job. I don't often mention them. Neither a gentleman nor a lady kisses and tells the whole damn Internet.

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Music: Pearl Jam -- Wish List

So here's the thing: I spent a reasonable amount of this last year in a lot of pain. Lots of people did. A lot of bad things happened this year for a lot of people I both know and don't, and the general consensus seems to be that 2011 can go screw itself.

And a lot of bad things happened to me too, y'know? It came in with funerals and it's going out with funerals, and I spent at least two months of it grieving so hard I was dead in my head and dead in my heart and had to crawl my way out of the fiercest depression I've even contemplated in years, and it was a slow damn crawl. I failed at relationships right and left. There are people I love I'm worried about right now. There were people I cared about who proved themselves not to be who I thought, and not in good ways, and it broke my heart. There was a shocking amount of random malice in the air. There were some very cherished illusions that I had to finally let go, and they broke my heart too, and I don't think I've slept well or peacefully for a long time now.

But, y'know, here's what I remember:

This year I taught one of my (suddenly, startlingly) dearest friends how to eat passionfruit under the totem poles in Stanley Park. I saw the Pacific Ocean and the crows and seabirds wheeling over it at sunset, and hugged redwood trees. I wandered along Queen West at three in the morning on Nuit Blanche, singing nineties songs with one equally drunk friend and one bemusedly sober one, and waved like the Queen at Parkdale from the second-floor balcony at the Gladstone. I stayed up all night at City Hall to watch stranger after stranger give deputations on how they love this city fiercely, and how much it needed to be preserved, drinking coffee that a stranger bought us all like it was absolutely nothing, and felt the thing that the G20 weekend broke inside me quietly, softly mend. I threw a long, loud, thorough kind of party for my birthday that didn't let up until past last call, and then wandered through the Annex sitting on picnic benches and nosing through alleyways until 4:30 in the morning while the person beside me chain-smoked cigarettes and talked about the things you talk about in the dark. I stood in the dark kitchen of CSI Annex passing around a bottle of wine with people I only know from volunteering together and talking about the future of urban agriculture in this city, all in the remains of the most excellent fundraiser we'd all helped put together.

I went, unexpectedly, to New York to be An Author. I went, unexpectedly, to King West to be An Author. I realized from how everyone was acting about this book that holy shit, I am An Author, and I'd better get used to it fast, and that this might turn out to be very, very good after all.

I saw a lot of music. I discovered some terrifyingly good bands. I saw a double rainbow over Coxwell Avenue on Victoria Day, on the way to the beach for fireworks. I wrote. I struggled with words and they fought me and, here and there, they came clear in bursts of light and poured poetry out between my fingers.

I met good people. I reconnected with good people. I kissed some dead gorgeous boys under bumping umbrellas; in front of silent movies flickering on the TV screen.

The Roommate and I took long summer evening walks in Christie Pits, and I lay in the grass while she did goofy tai chi moves and talked theoretical psych, and I watched the bats wheel cautiously in the sky as the night came in. I saw weddings. I saw new baby pictures. I set things in motion I won't be able to undo.

I walked up Brunswick Avenue from the market, or from work, or from wherever out late I'd been, and reached up, and ran my fingers along the bottom of each curling leaf.

And...that's all I remember. All I remember is that I'm alive, and that while I have a funeral to go to tomorrow, tonight is steak for dinner, warm houses and good company, champagne with some of my dearest.

Isn't that just the oddest thing?

Stay good, loves. Happy New Year. Drink to all the things that aren't funerals tonight, and I'll see you on the other side.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Timber Timbre -- Black Water

This is how it's supposed to be: Afternoon sunlight spilling across the creaky wood floor of my bedroom, and all over the century-old red bricks of the house next door, outside the living room window. Live Pearl Jam on the radio; a fuzzy burgundy sweater hung over the back of my chair. Sea salt chocolate, and bright, smooth focus, and writery work -- Ideomancer editorial, interview questions, page proofs for a reprint anthology -- under my hands. The floor's old in this apartment, and worn smooth. I can do little pirouettes on my way to the kitchen sink to fill up my mug with water and not catch my socks on splinters.

The Dayjob is closed for the next week and change. I'm not back at work until Tuesday after next. Until then, I live how it's supposed to be.

(

matociquala introduced me to this essay years ago. It's very Vonnegut, and it made me stop more, and notice things. Read it. Take a minute.)

We get so busy. I get so busy, y'know? And sometimes I forget about these little breaths and moments of light shifting on the floor; the little slivers of perfection you get in between all the obligation and noise.

No, we might not always get the lives we want. There are too many things stacked against us in terms of time, and money, and the push-pull dance that's the needs and desires of other people. But those lives find their way in through the corners. They squeeze up through the cracks and afternoons off, in the smell of baking and hair bunched up out of your face and the idle IM chatter minimized on your desktop. They're always there, flowing underneath our feet like the water table. Waiting for us to stop, and turn our noses up to the sky, and breathe in deep.

Happy holidays, kids. Stay good, 'cause I know you are.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: 102.1 The Edge

December 18-19, 2011 Progress Notes:

"Hold Fast"

Words today: 175.
Words total: 175.
Reason for stopping: Draft.

Darling du Jour: It's a poem, and they don't darling well.
Mean Things: It's also a Tam Lin poem, and it's all mean things.

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: Nalo Hopkinson, The Chaos; Ryan Oakley, Technicolor Super Mall.

(Yes, I am reading Nalo's new book months ahead of release. Friends in medium-high places, loves; the right medium-high places.)

Medium-high silence here too: Lot of up and down on a couple things this month, and it's not turned out as the best of all possible worlds, really. I'm not the person who's going to have to do the hard pushing on any of it and my third accredited superpower is that I can cope, and so cope we shall, but if you have any internet-transmissible magic, a dear friend of mine could use all the help he can get. Prayers to the Patron Saint of Doing Hard Things appreciated.

Professionally, though, all's well and more: Lois Tilton's named "The Ground Whereon She Stands" the best story of Realms of Fantasy's final year in her Locus end-of-year roundup, and the Indigo Teen Blog has informed me they loved the hell out of Above, and somehow we were in the Huffington Post today. The Appearances page on the website will also be updated shortly, once I get to claim some vacation days on the dayjob calendar and can formalize where I'm going to be next year for your panty- or tomato-throwing pleasure.

More words and presence to come, hopefully. The dayjob's winding down for the end of the year, and I will be home, roasting chickens and being pajamaed and nudging my nose at words.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Catherine Wheel -- Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck

November 13, 2011 Progress Notes:

"Five Autopsies"

Words today: 1400.
Words total: 4250.
Reason for stopping: It's getting kind of late here, and my knees hurt from being tucked up in the desk chair all evening.

Books in progress: David Mitchell, number9dream.

This weekend, I've been doing what normal people do for weekends: going to parties, having brunch, sleeping in, doing my laundry, poking through art galleries, watching old movies, hanging out with my friends. Mostly because it's easy to forget that no, this working two and a half jobs thing isn't actually supposed to be normal, and some people do actually do things for enjoyment on their weekends routinely, and as someone on Twitter put it today, there's a serenity to being fully rested.

It made tonight's words a grim sort of haul -- kind of like sticking one hand on the back of your head and shoving your nose into the bowl to force your dinner down -- but it got done, and the wordcount's respectable. And so it goes.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: The Darcys -- Edmonton to Purgatory

November 9, 2011 Progress Notes:

"Five Autopsies"

Words today: 600.
Words total: 2850.
Reason for stopping: After this many years, you know when you're just not going to get anywhere with a scene tonight.

Books in progress: David Mitchell, number9dream.

A few quiet days here. Dayjob is gearing up for the Return of the Busy Bit (tm), I had some auctorial things to do that will hopefully pay off in a few months' time, and the December issue of Ideo is being more-than-usually finicky. I am puttering at tasks, but not with especial urgency. I am making plans, but quietly. There are enough groceries in the house for the first time in two and a half weeks, and I spent today huddled in my big grey feather-print hoodie running errands and getting rained on by the rain.

I am still tired. I think the jetlag/travel tired rolled right into the changing the clocks tired. Yawn.

I have a fancy party to go to tomorrow night (Not Far From the Tree's end-of-season do, for which I was a planning committee volunteer, so yay party!), so no words to be had until the weekend, most likely. When we will kick deadlines in the head with boots on. Or hoodies.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Cat Power -- Metal Heart

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leahbobet

Fiction and Other White Lies

November 2016

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Drowning Nor Waving

This girl's life among the electrical lights

Entries tagged with this is our life

Thud: Short Story

Thud: On Roadstead Farm

Thud: On Roadstead Farm

Mother Russia rain down down DOWN–

Begin as you mean to go on.

Thud: On Roadstead Farm

Thud: On Roadstead Farm

Thud: On Roadstead Farm

(no subject)

(no subject)

All the time that we wasted, I want to waste it again.

A good father and a bad seed.

You can still write even when you can't feel your legs.

More faux metrics.

Valentines.

(no subject)

How it's supposed to be.

If you could call this luck.

Wasted on the smaller bits of love.

It's damned if you don't, and it's damned if you do.

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November 2016

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