nose to the grindstone

 journal, shadow bound, talatu, writing life  2 Responses »
Jan 032009
 

Pledged is duly rechapterised, and I'm celebrating by … starting another project straight away.

Yeah, it's not particularly smart, there's this little thing called downtime which I hear is really effective in guarding against burnout… but this project (untitled, like all my new projects, which makes blogging about them tricksome at best) is a short story, and contracted, so I kinda hafta start it now. If I want to, you know, eat. No biggie.

I also have one (contracted) novel outline, one short story collection critique, and one (uncontracted) (for now) novel outline that needs doing sooner rather than later. It's a good thing I don't have a dayjob at the moment. When I quit the baby mines, everyone was saying things like, "Oh, wow! Two months off work. Think of all the sleeping in you'll be able to do!" I always smiled and nodded, but in my head I was replying, "Actually, I was thinking if I got up early every day, I'd be able to squeeze in even more writing!"

It's a sickness. Really.

Here, to distract you, have some links:

surreal, but 100% true

 asides, journal  9 Responses »
Dec 042008
 

Yesterday, I'm driving home, and the mobile rings. Being responsible, I pulled over to the side of the road before attempting to answer it, by which time the phone had stopped ringing.

And while I'm busy with the phone, the passenger door opens, and I look up to see a little old lady clambering into the car.

Fortunately, my life experiences to date have equipped me with the perfect skill for dealing with this particular circumstance. I pasted on a smile and, feeling very Arthur Dent, managed to greet her with, "Er…hello?"

"You're early," she replied cheerfully. "And you're driving a different car."

"Ah. In fact, ma'am, I think I'm not the person you're waiting for," I suggested.

She peered at me, blinked, and said, "Oh! Oh, no, you're not!"

After which she promptly started clambering (in the slow and hesitant mannerism of the old and frail) out of the car.

you know what your decision is, which is not to decide

 journal, writing life  16 Responses »
Nov 032008
 

The problem with drinking while working is that it can quickly turn into just plain drinking, and from there it's a short stumble to "work? what? yes, of course, definitely pour me another."

Er…oops.

To keep things language-focussed, I did start a new game of awarding "vocabulary points" to those who used neglected or difficult or otherwise-impressive words, which resulted in our drunken conversation being relatively highbrow. (Although I must admit, toward the end of the night, the words did get harder to pronounce. This is when I started up the corollary game of awarding "enunciation points".) And I made everyone play freerice (which has evolved from being just about vocabulary and is now also about maps, chemical symbols, learning foreign languages, and artwork), so although we were drunken idjits, we were charitable drunken idjits.

At least I managed to get half of my words for the day before becoming totally delinquent, so that should help minimise today's catch-up.

In the meantime, the evolution of vampire moths is unspeakably cool.

my predictive library refuses to remember deb

 journal, writing life  5 Responses »
Nov 012008
 

The Alien Onion reports on a new trend wherein "book" evolves into meaning "cool", which I am linking both because I find the evolution of the english language a fascinating process, and because my publishers really do rock.

Lately, my brain appears to be fixating on txtspeak and lolspeak. For example, the dinner discussion last night centred for some time around whether we could discern a kiwi accent in the sender's choice of spelling, or whether we were making it up.1 I've spent a good part of the last week training Spawn in lolspeak.2 Also, I appear to have degenerated entirely in my own standards. A lolspeak habit, I has one.

I wonder if my brain is working on a story about language that I don't know about yet.

  1. I think we were making it up. I was more interested in the way the language was evolving so that this sort of unfixed and flexible spelling was not only accepted, but becoming the norm. [↩]
  2. What? She's young, and adaptable, so it won't scar her (too much), and I think it would be hilarious if she greeted her father with a tilted head and the phrase 'O RLY?' [↩]
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