It's been a slow week. Not only did it seem to drag (Friday took forever to get here!) but every day was kinda the same thing, over and over. Work was the same old hat, I managed to squeeze dinner and at least an hour of writing in most evenings, and then an hour of reading before bed.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
But the weekend is here! I might manage an hour of writing here right away, though I don't expect to achieve much more. I mean, come on, look at this forecast:
So, yeah, rafting today for sure. Hope to hit the Bow around noon with three or four buddies, and then we're having a walleye fish fry afterwards for a friend's birthday. The day is going to be lost to shenanigans.
Not that I mind. Summer was made for shenanigans. Plus, I only have five days left at the office and then I'm on holidays for ten days! Hope this amazing weather holds for that long, because I am really, really looking forward to a week of iced coffees and margaritas in the sunshade with my writing...!
I'm working on another nice little Scrivener post for you guys, but in the meantime, here's a shot of the hail that hit us in Calgary last night:
The light show that accompanied it was something else, and went on for hours. The hail was kinda crazy when it hit, because it started before the rain with these huge, random pieces of ice falling through the neighbourhood. After a few minutes of that it tapered off into smaller (though still golf ball sized) chunks coming down rapidly, and those lasted for at least ten minutes. The wind picked up, the rain started falling, and some crazy neighbours ran out to try to save their vehicles and, oddly enough, gardens. I mean, one of those chunks in the side of the head would knock you on your ass. Are your petunias really worth that?
Anyway, a few dents in the top of my car this morning, plus I had to pull a huge tree branch out of the driveway before I could leave for work. Idiot#1 isn't very happy about the four big dents in the hood of his truck, either.
The weather has been most excellent in Calgary this week, but last night as I was sitting at the writing desk I noticed all the trees suddenly whipping all crazy like. Within moments these clouds—which a friend of mine called Harry Potter clouds—rolled over our nice blue skies:
Obviously Voldemort was out and about, causing some kind of ruckus...
The rewrite of chapter eleven that I mentioned in my last post is done. I finished the dialogue and prose last night, with a final weigh in of just over 3K words. It feels better than the original version did. I was never really happy with the original: the characters acted strangely, Deyl performed some magic she shouldn't have been able to, and it was kind of dull.
The new version has a lot more action. The location is the same, much of the dialogue is the same (at least, the same message and key points are there) but it's got more interest and impact, and makes their entire road trip seem more challenging—like it should be!
Anyway, I'm happy enough to leave it at that for now. If I can stick to my schedule I'll be reviewing my edits of chapters one through fifteen on the weekend. Hopefully I'll have some perspective on the changes I've made and see if I need to make any last adjustments.
Tonight I'm hoping to finish the edits for chapter twelve. It shouldn't be too much of a challenge: it's a shorter chapter, and at a glance it doesn't look like it needs much work.
I was on a roll yesterday with my plans for the next round of revisions to I Had To Fall, almost ready to dive in a start making the changes. But then I felt it necessary to go out to Tipps last night and celebrate my friend Duke's 28th birthday... it was a late night.
Mmmm... Electric Popsicle
"I'm actually crying, you bastards!" -Duke, after the Prairie Fire shot
Elliot. As usual.
Just a grand ol' time at Tipps.
First thing this morning I had to roll out of bed and whip this house into shape for a viewing (the house is for sale...), but the viewers never showed up! Bastards!
So then I squeezed in about an hour of work—in the sunshade outside, most excellent!—before our guests showed up. And then of course I feel obliged to entertain for a few hours, just enjoying the beautiful summer weather.
Yes, summer. Love of my life.
I have high hopes for more writing time in a few hours, when my guests head off to the UFC show at the Saddledome. I'm thinking I'll dive right in and start making those changes I've been so meticulously planning...
Keeping my fingers crossed that life stops interfering for a few hours!
I really should look back through my posts and see if I've already done this song... but I'm lazy, and I'm 90% sure I haven't.
Them Crooked Vultures only has one, self-titled album out there. But it's an awesome chunk of music. That being said, it's a little too laid back for my usual writing tunes. Great for editing to, though! Very relaxing when focusing on those troubling logic problems. And for whatever reason, I really love this album on repeat while I'm designing at the office.
Not now, chief. I'm in the fucking zone.
And I realize I haven't posted since last week's Tuesday Tunes, which isn't very good of me, considering that I recently resolved to post more often... oh well. I made it back to Calgary in time for the weather to turn shitty again, making me wonder if everyone lied about the nice weather they had during Stampede. Hm?
On my return I found my garden in total disarray, but still growing strong. Mostly. I definitely have a slug problem. Let me know if you have toads to sell or give away. The strawberry patch is thriving, and I've found more time for editing than I'd anticipated.
I've finished the simple and easy revisions: the little problems like repetition, grammar, word choice, etc. that my critique partner pointed out. These were mostly changes that I didn't have to spend much time thinking about, it was a simple matter of keeping what I had, smacking my forehead at obvious mistakes and changing it, or a short deliberation and then writing something new or cutting something entirely.
But along the way I've made notes on the bigger issues. These are going to take some serious think-time and list-making. Like introducing Deyl's split personality, which I had halfway decided to cut but my critique partner has convinced me to include. Which means the dual personality parts need to be beefed up, and that affects the entire story in a lot of different ways. I'm also taking another look at how quickly Deyl's knowledge and use of power develops, and thinking about slowing it down. Seems to make more sense if it takes her longer. I also need to clarify a few things throughout the entire work, like what Deyl's weaknesses are and how the fae use their powers. All of these things will affect larger parts of the story, so I want to be sure I have a road map for the changes before I make them.
Since my critique partner is in China until the end of the month, I'll move on to the list-making process while she's gone, and see what I can come up with. Onward!
I love this time of year. Of course, it snowed Saturday. But everything had melted by Sunday morning, and I have the blisters to prove I actually got some yard work done before relaxing in the sun, Pina Colada in hand.
It was so gorgeous out this afternoon that I moved the office outside. Not only did I get in some critique work, but I finished chapter six and seven in the editing / revision of my own work. Maybe I'll finish chapter eight tomorrow?
And yes, my cat is wearing a sweater. He has a scratching problem, and this is the punishment / cure.
A whole week went by and I didn't really notice. Hm.
Nothing got done this week. Well, not much. I was sick, the playoffs are on, and my garden needed some serious attention. Plus, I picked up and re-read Veronica Roth's Divergent, since the sequel comes out this week.
Hopefully this week will be more productive. I'm feeling better, the playoffs are in round two (meaning less games...) and it's supposed to rain all week, so no gardening.
Well, the nice thing about snow in April—as opposed to snow in January—is that it all melts the next day. And it has. Looks like spring in Calgary again today.
I finished reviewing the comments from my critique partner through chapter ten tonight, and discovered something: I have a new hero. She's pointed out so many useful little bits of things I hadn't noticed, hadn't really thought about, or wasn't sure about. It's so incredibly helpful!
I think tomorrow I'll go through the text and implement the little changes, the easy fixes, and add to the notes I've already made in regards to the big changes -- the ones that make me nervous. That'll also give me more time to consider those big changes, before I start hacking and slashing.
Ah, Calgary. We don't get even an inch of snow in January, but come April...
Maybe I'll be snowed in and can't get into work tomorrow? Ha... if only. That excuse used to work when I drove a Civic, but I don't think it'll fly when the boss knows I have the Silverado at my disposal. Oh well.
Made it through three and a half chapters worth of notes from my critique partner tonight, after a lovely Vietnamese dinner in the midst of the snowstorm. She's brought up a lot of good points: some things that have surprised me, some that made me face-palm at my own stupidity, and other things that I already felt uncertain about. I'm hopeful that I'll make it to the end of her notes tomorrow so I can create a kind of road map for revisions over the weekend.
A weekend at the house. I was going to go out camping with Husband, until we realized the spot we were heading to is supposed to get like three feet of snow between tonight and tomorrow. So maybe the next weekend...
My iPhone tells me it's supposed to get up to 1°C [that's about 34°F for you Yankees out there] today, though I'm not sure I believe it. The forecast for all of next week is sunny and above zero, getting up to something like 8°C [46°F] midweek. For January, that's pretty damn nice. Living in Calgary you get used to some unexpectedly warm winter weather, because of the chinooks, but this winter has been beyond weird this year, even for Cowtown.
I mean, there's maybe 20 cm [ahem... less than a foot] of snow on the ground, and that's only been here for a week. It's been brown all year, and though the past week saw temperatures in the -30°C [-22°F] range, it seems like things are warming up again. Warm enough to melt this measly bit of white stuff we've got on the ground.
So, is anyone else weirded out? I mean, there's that winter-hating part of me that loves it, but it just seems wrong somehow. Or do you think, as history has a way of showing us, that we're going to have a warm, brown winter only to find April, May and June hideously cold and wet and snowy?
Personally, I'd rather have a short, sweet wintery winter than be slogging through sleet and cold when my mind is telling me it should be springy and warm and sunny...
And yes, this entire blog post was about the weather. Sue me.
Morning again, my favourite time of day. Yesterday we had a wildly beautiful sunrise, which I snapped a couple crappy photos of on my way into the office. Here:
So that was yesterday. Another dawn, another day. Today I've got to run around Calgary, errands, errands, and more errands. In fact, "Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time."
You do know where that quote is from, right? Right?!?!
I'm probably not going to get any writing in until later this evening, because it's supposed to be something like 29°C today, and I refuse to coop myself inside during the very last of the summer weather. It's just wrong.
Maybe I'll bring my Air outside and write...? We'll see.
First, I was going to comment on how lovely it was to work on my final copy edit outside in the gazebo, under a brilliant blue sky with temperatures well above 20°C.
Then I looked back and realized how much, between here and twitter, I comment on the weather.
Is that a bad thing? Maybe. Boring? Probably. But I can't help it. You see, I'm Canadian. We talk about the weather. It's just what we do—a lot.
So moving on. The copy edit is going really well, and really fast. I'm hoping to have it done before Tuesday, so that I can take the evening off and stay up all night reading PASSION by Lauren Kate. Let's face it: I'm going to do that anyway, thus it would be nice to have I HAD TO FALL all wrapped up so I can do the final spell check and formatting before I get lost in a new book.
On a side note, I've also made a lot of progress with my German lessons. I should be done Level II before I go on holidays at the end of July. I only wish I actually knew someone here who speaks German, because I could really use the practice. Maybe I should just book a flight to Deutschland... Ha, I wish.
And as for you New Yorkers sweating it out at 99°F (about 37°C) let me only add: I'm jealous.
