Barely!

Ack!

I... just... barely... reached... 2300 words!

I'm way ready for bed (Mondays will do that to me) so I'm calling it quits for the night just before the end of chapter three dialogue. I'd like to stay up and finish it, but... no.

A couple times tonight I didn't think I'd make the 2300 word mark, but I did it. At 2375, I just barely did it.

Of course, I spent a good chunk of the evening just hanging out while Idiot#1 and his hunting buddies butchered the deer they shot on the weekend. I'd show you the pics, but I bet a lot of you don't want to see the dead deer in my garage... Long story short, it was a tiring evening.

But I'm done. Off to update my word count on the NaNo site!

Until tomorrow,
S.

The Real Day 1

Normally, I loathe Mondays. However, I have high hopes for today!

I'm on the first weekday of my staycation. Right at this moment I would normally be settling in at my desk for the workday. Instead, as the temperature begins its climb from 7° overnight to the 29° forecasted for this afternoon (yes!!) I'm going go take my friend's dog for a walk and then start writing. Right after I cook up an iced coffee, naturally.

*Sun peaks from behind a cloud, illuminating my writing desk*

No, today just doesn't have that typical F-U feel that a Monday usually entails.

XD

S.

Fingers Crossed

I wish writing was my day job, the one that pays the bills. But it ain't.

However, my office building was undergoing renovations that started on Friday at noon and are supposed to have been completed last night. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that the contractors fell behind schedule (it does happen!) and that when I roll up at 8:30 I end up getting sent home because the building isn't ready yet.

Wouldn't that be nice? I could probably finish the edits to chapters five, six and seven if I had the whole day off today!

But let's face it. Today is Monday, and Mondays never go well for me. Hell, I'll probably end up having to work late or something.

Anyway, chances are it will be a regular ol' day at the office, in which case I'm just going to sit down tonight and hopefully get a full chapter of critique done for my beta reader, and at least finish my edits to chapter five.

S.

Busy Little Bee

It's unlikely I'll get much writing done tonight. Maybe a bit of critique work before bed, but there's a good chance I'll be too tired. I started the day with a four hour hike through the woods, cutting, hacking and sawing down some trails at my camp. Lost my Drivers License at the bottom of the lake while swimming, snorkeled until I rescued said I.D. card, then drove into town. Ate some Lake of the Woods poutine—which was fn delicious—did some banking, only to come home and start working on tearing up the carpet in the master bedroom.

The new flooring in the living room. And what will replace the carpet in the master bedroom.

Believe it or not, that's the condensed version of my day.

So I'll be tired. But I fully intend to get up at dawn tomorrow morning, head back to the "office" (see yesterday's post...) and start writing. With any luck I'll have the loons calling and the sun shining.

Which reminds me of a sign I saw last week at the Kenora Farmer's Market: "If you're lucky enough to live at the lake, you're lucky enough."

I may be exhausted, but it's a good kind of exhaustion.
S.

There it is.

Things were going really well today, which naturally made me suspicious. It's Monday, after all. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And sure enough, I realized I'm coming down with a cold.

Ah, Mondays.

But the editing process went well tonight anyway. I made it halfway through chapter five, and since that's probably the longest chapter in the book, I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Back at it tomorrow. Hoping to get chapter six done.

There are some things money can't buy...

Party with friends and delicious snacks Friday night: $250
Camping Saturday & Sunday, three hours northwest of Calgary, in the mountains: $125
Some baseball and ice cream with friends Sunday afternoon: $5
Drinks in the backyard gazebo afterwards: $35
Watching L.A. take round one against the Canucks Sunday night: Priceless.

Haha... it was great though. The whole weekend was excellent, actually, even if it did leave me exhausted. No time for writing, of course, but should be back at it tomorrow...

And now I'll leave you with a photo I snapped Sunday morning, from our campsite at dawn:

Monday Math

Okay, I did the math.

If we eliminate Mondays and go with a four-day week and two-day weekend, we get:
243 work days/year (as opposed to a current 260)
61 weekends/year (as opposed to a current 52)

AND NO MONDAYS!!!

I woke up sick at five this morning and got a call from my mom at seven telling me another family member passed away last night. I despise Mondays.

I did manage to finish editing chapter two tonight, but that was all I could manage. My head is pounding. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Good Reads: Cast in Ruin

A good read is such an evil thing.

I took yesterday off work for two reasons: to clean my house and to write. House cleaning happened, which was good, because I started first thing in the morning. Then I stepped out onto the deck to run a quick errand and BAM! there was a book in my mailbox.

Michelle Sagara's CAST IN RUIN had finally arrived! So I devoured it. That was just barely afternoon, and I then proceeded to lose my entire afternoon and evening to reading. I'm not sure I put the book down once until I finished it, ten hours later.

But damn, it was worth it. If you haven't checked out the Cast series, do it now. The characters are beautiful, the humour frequently makes me laugh out loud (much to Husband's annoyance), and the fantasy world is so well developed it should serve as a lesson point for all little fantasy writers like myself.

If you're already well into the series, you'll love this one. Kailyn learns and grows magically (which usually happens) but this time around she also matures somewhat in terms of the men in her life, and has a bit of an epiphany in terms of growing up in general. And while this book answers a whole lotta questions about the Dragon Court and the Empire, it opens up a plethora of new mysteries. The egg? Bellusdeo? There wasn't enough Nightshade for my liking, but I'm sure we'll see plenty of him in the next installment, CAST IN PERIL, since they're heading to the West March—ostensibly together.

Because I read the thing so damn fast, I'm going to go back and re-read. Maybe at a sane person's pace. But once I've done the re-read... let the countdown to PERIL begin!!

We have a title!

Okay, some success since yesterday's post:

I messed around some more with the synopsis, and did get Vera talking sooner. Not as soon as I thought would be necessary, but that led me to something else…

The working title: SPEECHLESS.

It might not stick, but it'll do the trick for now. I also came up with an external crisis that I like, and that meshes well with the rest of the story and characters. I got far enough along in the synopsis today that I felt like switching over to my first draft character grid.

It was a good thing I did. Right away I can see plot holes and… I don't have enough characters! Over the next few days I'll jump back and forth between the synopsis and character grids, filling in those plot holes and adding some more characters. I've already found another character floating around in the free space in my mind who fits in as a nice little antagonist with my current cast.

And what did I say about the trilogy split revealing itself in the process? It did :)

To be honest, I'm kind of looking forward to working with a character who doesn't say a peep until a third of the way into the story. It'll be a challenge, creating interaction and engaging the reader while limiting Vera to non-verbal communication. But a challenge is a good thing.

For a Monday, it was a good day! Must be because it's a holiday...

Down Time

I'm in the midst of a bit of a writing break. I spent the weekend in Edmonton checking out Rammstein and Into Eternity, both awesome shows by the way. Then I returned to work on Monday (in case you aren't aware, I loathe Mondays) only to have my computer not turn on.

Just heard back from IT today. Hard drive is shot.

So, I'll pretty much be living at the office for the next couple of days, trying to recover what work I can and run damage control on my client work. In the midst of oil-show season.

I'm just going to keep looking forward to the weekend and hope fervently for three uninterrupted days of relaxing and writing. That's all I want in life. Seriously.

Yeah, About That.

So I've been gone for a while. Things got crazy at work, and then I got into a series of books I couldn't put down, and then there was a death in the family that pulled me out of town for most of last week.

Anyway, I'm back again. I'm feeling really... haywire. Because of all that stuff, I feel like my life has fallen off the tracks. I really enjoy spontaneity—from time to time—but mostly I like routine. I'm big on control, and routine gives me a feeling of control over my life. Right now I'm focusing on getting some of that control back.

Tomorrow is Monday. I'm going to try and make it as routine of a Monday as I possibly can—considering that I have issues with Mondays to begin with...

In other news, the rewrite of I Had to Fall is going well, all things considered. I'm hoping to finish the minor revisions and rewrites by the end of this week, and spend the following week or two on the major revisions. That puts the last week of May for final tweaks and polish.


Then off to query I go...

It's a Love-Hate Thing

Why do I even get out of bed on Mondays?

I'll check with the boss and see if I can do something about that. Think she'll go for it?

...That's what I thought.

My computer wasn't working this morning. Just wouldn't start. When I fixed that (good old Mac Safe Boot) I realized the company website and emails had been down all weekend (for which I blame Yahoo) and we missed any and all client emails that may have been sent between 4:30 Friday and 9:30 Monday. While fixing that, a second office computer crashed.

I love technology, but sometimes... not so much.