feed_your_muse: Kneeling woman with Ravens (Default)
( Oct. 2nd, 2009 03:53 pm)


I've breached the 50k barrier (woo!) and have one chapter to go before reaching the end of part one. I'm so pleased, I can't wait to get onto part two. I've slowed down a fair bit in the last few weeks as we've approached the new term. Hopefully, I can pick things up again during my lunch breaks and crack on a bit more.

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Progress. I have it. Bwahahahahaah!


It will soon be time to hunt for pumpkin and butternut squash to make my roasted autumn soup with, adding in my Tuscan herb mix for a last hint of summer. It will also soon be time to dust off the slow cooker so that I can set stews/ curries/ soups cooking while I'm at work. There are few things better than coming home to a house that's full of the smell of glorious food; especially as the house will probably be cool. We managed to avoid lighting the first fire until November last year - whether or not we'll manage it this year I don't know as we've already started using the hot water bottles (last night was pretty chilly.)

Took the dogs for a walk before bed, as per usual, but this time the cat decided she wanted to come to! So, at a much slower pace than normal we tramped onto the reserve, into and through the wood (this was scary - her tail was fluffed like a bottle brush the whole time), then down the trail and into a small copse before heading back out onto the main trail and back up to the house. Everyone was extremely pleased with themselves and all of the four-leggers went straight to bed because being a border collie/ cat is pretty exhausting really. :-)

I am lergified. Unlike last year I managed to fight off the germs in the first week of students being back, but I succumbed this week to the aching head and lethargy (my bed, she calls to me) but, the show must go on and all that. My writing productivity has declined day by day this week in an almost embarrasing fashion, but I am on chapter 13/ 48K and I will--at the very least--finish section one this weekend.

Anyway, how's your week been? Good, bad, indifferent?

The start of term rush has begun and we've all been inundated with tours and resources sessions. It's been rewarding to see people get what you're trying to teach them, but it's knackering on the legs and feet and all I want to do when I get home is lie down in a hot bath with a nice cold drink in my hand. Unfortunately, by the time I get home I've got time for a bath and a cup of tea, a bit of dog walking, and then it's in bed to rinse / repeat the next day. Due to an increase in traffic, I now have to leave the house at 07:00hrs which is awful but at least I get to work c. 07:50 so I've got time to get settled before I have to start work.

(I am looking forward to Saturday; I have an appointment with a pillow and a duvet and only the postman and the imminent threat of post being savaged by the hounds will change that.)
Another reason I'm looking forward to Saturday, other than the lie-in, is Dorian Grey. I'm going to see that when Chum #1 gets home from work, and we can see how much it differs from the book.

I am currently re-reading Green Rider by Kristen Britain. I've just received my copy of The High  King's Tomb but it's been so long between books that I thought I ought to re-acquaint myself with the first two. (With some books, they come out so far apart that I'm just not bothered in the end.)

So, coffee; a few more tours; then home for spicy bean stew and dog walking.

I did get some words done yesterday, as well:

Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 810
Present Total Word Count: 46,831
Goal: 80,000
My plan is to do more at the weekend and hopefully, once everyone's settled in, I'll be able to get more done at lunchtime/ in the evenings in a couple of weeks as I'll be less tired.
Tags:

The last four days have been nice and relaxing and full of sloth. There, I said it - I was bone idle. My brain was fried so I've spent most of the past four days re-watching Supernatural and reading a couple of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels (crime with a paranormal/ Deliverance (as in exorcism) twist.) Good stuff, and nothing like the books I'd been reading prior to that, or anything like the book I'm writing so it was a bit of a headspace holiday.
I'm now on Day Five of the holiday and I thought I'd better get some writing done, just to get back into it before I head back to work; but the drain man's just arrived so I'll blog first and write when he's done. (Victorian drains - you've just got to love them. Sigh.) The dogs are bemused, the tap's running in the bath, and a no-doubt fragrant odour is wafting in the hot sun in as welcome a fashion as a bloated rat at a barbeque. Hopefully, most of my neighbours are still at work.

In other news...I've re-visited a flash piece that didn't work too well and I think I've figured out how to make it better (and, by virtue of it being me, longer.) I've sketched out the first page or so and will work on that as a 'down-time' piece to give me a break from the unnamed one - I shall have to think of a working title for the unnamed one at some point; at 40+K it ought to be called something other than Unnamed UF, eh?

In other, other news...it's boiling. Autumn arrived with crisp air and hazy light, the sound of rooks in the trees; and now, the sun's out, the air is muggy and yellow (thunder on the way perhaps?) and the collies are restless - only one walk so far today, so they're feeling fractious. More exercise for me later then. :->

Back to the day job tomorrow which is good, although it does mean that I'll have to leave the house early as the kids are back at school from today so the roads will be clogged with the school run if you hit it wrong. So I need to be on the road for 07:15 at the latest. ::phbbbbt:: And in a couple of weeks the universities crank up to speed to welcome all the new and returning students and we'll all hit the ground running and won't really stop until mid-October when we'll all collapse into jelly-like heaps and gibber quietly in our offices. But it's all good fun, so bring on the circus!

Right. Enough chit-chattery. Time for some work.

I'll leave you with an update of where I got to last:

Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 2,392 (over 2 sessions)
Present Total Word Count: 40,235
Goal: 80,000 (although, the first draft is likely to be waaaay longer as I'm pretty sure that I started it in completely the wrong place. Nice to know that there are some constants in life.)


Holiday over - back to the grindstone. (The updating of publications...oh, the glamour)
I had a nice relaxing time off; read a lot, wrote a bit, went and saw Harry Potter (not bad, but it lacked the zoom zoom pace of Order of the Phoenix - bit of a filler, I think.)

Fiona Glass
has been doing posts on people's desks up on her blog. Mine went up on Friday and you can take a look at it here.

meta_writer are starting a new series of Back to Basics (of writing) posts today, and these will run until the 28th of July, so go along and check them out/ comment.

The as yet untitled YA urban fantasy is jogging along (although, as ever, it's started in the wrong place, but that's what revisions are for, eh?)



I'm aiming for a first draft finish date of 7th October. We shall see.
feed_your_muse: Red, Welsh Border Collie (Bran)
( Jul. 9th, 2009 04:42 pm)




First, Lynn Viehl - author of the Stardoc and Darkyn series, will be running her Left Behind & Loving It week of virtual workshops. These are taking place at the same time as the Romance Divas workshops and RWA's National Conference. There are some great workshops in her line-up, so go check out the post!



Secondly, (and probably only of interest to me) I'm nearly on holiday! Yay! Just had a succesful school visit at work which went really well and was a good way to round off the week, so I'm feeling nicely upbeat. All I need now is about 18 hours of sleep and I should be right. I'm not going anywhere as chum #1 can't take time off in the summer due to being a children's librarian, but that's okay. I'll just lounge around the house until the dogs plague me into taking them for (another) walk.
I have writing and editing to do and no need to get up at 05:30 for work so I'm hoping it will be a lovely combination of relaxing and productive.

feed_your_muse: Kneeling woman with Ravens (Default)
( May. 28th, 2009 01:57 pm)
Well, my brief holiday is over and it's back to work  - and the preparation for a presentation I have to give at a staff conference next Thursday & Friday (the 4th & 5th of June). I was volunteered for this, so it should be interesting as I have to do a 20 minute session on effective Google searching (aka Improving Your Google-fu) using interactive voting pads. *cough* I know what I'll be doing for the next little while, then. ::grrr::

Apart from that, the sun is trying to shine through the cloud cover; my vitamin D euphoria is wearing off slowly and I'm working until 21:00hrs on my first day back. Typical.

Beauty and the Beast retelling is going well; I'll do more on that later - see if I can get it up to 8k. (considering where I am in the tale at 3.6k, it's going to be over 10k by the time I'm done
Tags:

No writing over the weekend, although Friday's wordcount was good, so I'm pleased with that as I got another 2,207 words on the short which brings it up to:

Does Old Earth Dream of Green, Green Things?
5948 / 6000

It's also rather obvious that I'm going to have to revise the first draft wordcount up (again) so I think I'll take it up to 10K and if it's done before then that's fine.


Saturday I read The Black Ship by Diana Pharoah Francis - really enjoyed it; Thorn is a great character and I liked the fact that he hung onto his integrity no matter what people did to him. I also liked the fact that the Captain and Thorn's crimpers didn't turn on him once they found out how Pilot's are made. I'm looking forward to reading the Turning Tide (Amazon UK I am looking at you. And tapping my fingers.)
It was my turn to cook, so I did cold weather food (it had been wazzing with rain on and off all day): sausage (cumberland), mash, peas, and gravy. Lovely! I then had a retro moment and watched the first two Star Trek films - it'd been years since I'd seen them and it was interesting to watch them when I'd just seen the new Star Trek film last weekend.

Sunday I was up early to go swimming with Chum #1, her brother, his wife, and their four children. Mayhem ensued, naturally and lots of pool water was swallowed by over-excited children. We all repaired home for a cup of tea and then cleaning was done, which involved the donation of a lot of my books that I'd shoved in boxes and forgotten about being given to our local RSPCA shop to sell. (It also meant that I found some books I'd forgotten about that I wanted to hang on to, so they've now made their way upstairs to 'rest' on the landing for a bit while I decide where to put them.

So, properly exhausted, I went to bed like a good librarian and now the week has started again. BUT! The second bank holiday of the month is approaching and I will be off for SIX days! Yay!

How did your weekend go?
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