embracing uncertainty

 journal, writing life  11 Responses »
Nov 222008
 

Yesterday, I gave notice to my dayjob. Farewell to the baby mines for me! In four weeks, I shall be walking out of their doors, never to return. No more semen samples, no more discussions with patients about the consistency of their menstrual flow, no more explaining the convoluted process of the Medicare Safety Net and how it works (or fails to work) with our invoicing system, no more chasing people for money… Well, actually, four more weeks of it first, but then…!

Much as I would like to turn to writing full-time, my writing income (which term I use very loosely, meaning not income so much as lack thereof) is not quite up to that. Instead, I will have a couple of months away from work, after which I will be moving cities and starting a new dayjob.

It is not a particularly good economic climate in which to have a break between paying jobs, and I am not a personality type which copes well with uncertain, vague, or rapidly changing circumstances… but I'm doing it anyway. And I'm looking forward to it.

So, here's to following your heart random whimsical impulses…

if i had a tardis, i would've written it by now

 journal, shadow bound, shadow queen, writing life  Comments Off
Sep 202008
 

Belated apologies for my silence over the past couple of days. Somehow (it might, I dunno, just maybe, have something to do with the increased connection speed I am currently enjoying) I managed to exceed my internet plan's quota, which means every extra byte is costing ludicrous amounts of money. Oops.

You might think that having no internet would allow me to be more productive, but alas, you would be wrong. Procrastination always finds a way. I did manage to mail the Shadow Queen proofs back to the publisher, which has left my desk startlingly clear. Seriously. Two stacks of paper each 400 odd pages deep takes up a lot of room. I'd forgotten the top of my desk was that colour.

With the proofs gone, I'm now free to start concentrating on the revisions to the sequel, which have been languishing unloved and unattended for far too long. And by "far too long", I naturally mean "this book was due in June 08".

Oops.

On the upside, I am promised sunshine and lots of it today, so I think I shall enjoy the benefits of laptop ownership (can you believe the burglar missed the laptop?!) and work outside. Huzzah!

reality check: normal.

 journal  2 Responses »
Sep 102008
 

I'm currently reading H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and it's quite unsettling. Not because of the storyline, or the ideas behind the storyline.

No, it's unsettling because, whenever I come across a line lifted wholesale from the book into Jeff Wayne's musical version, I can hear the narrator's voice echoing in my memory as if he's standing behind me, narrating the book. Given my reading time is normally late at night, curled up in bed, it's proving a touch jarring.

I also wake up in the morning humming "Forever Autumn" or "Thunder Child".

Fortunately, this morning I stumbled across this stunningly reassuring website. I cannot tell you how much this amuses me.

the road holds great danger

 journal, shadow queen  6 Responses »
Sep 092008
 

The coloured tags mark out the pages which were too tricksome to fix on the first pass. Tricksome could mean the fix involved multiple pages, or finding a more elegant phrase which refused to come to mind at the time, or even that the fix simply required more from me than inserting a missed comma and thus was more than my sleep-deprived brain could handle that particular night. In other words, some will not actually be tricksome. Here's to hoping the latter form the majority of the fixes remaining!

But I do not think I will be working on the manuscript today. For today I came home to a smashed pane on the front door, and a ransacked house.

So far as I can see, they've only taken my jewellery, some loose cash, my old iPod, my chargers (ipod, mobile phone, and digital camera — I'll miss those until I can replace them!), and my backpack to carry it all out in. The jewellery is a blow, not because it was worth all that much but because of the sentimental value: every piece I had was a gift from someone precious to me. I'm somewhat astonished that they didn't take the laptop, which was sitting in plain view, or the LCD monitor of the desktop. It's possible, however, that I surprised them and they were still in the house when I came home — which is not a particularly pleasant thought.

I have spent the afternoon cleaning up after their mess, and the police forensic fellow's dust, and tonight I plan to enjoy a hot shower and some TV watching. Preferably involving crims getting their comeuppance.

Max thought the forensic police officer had placed all that lovely dust on the table in the sunshine just for him to loll about in. Helpful critter.

why, yes, it is all about me. isn't it?

 journal  6 Responses »
Aug 202008
 

I'm feeling somewhat whimsical and philosophical this morning, so, a discussion question: love at first sight — does it exist?

Me, like all good fence-sitters, I can't quite decide — but if pressed I would have to say nope, it's wishful thinking and retrospective and hindsight.

I've certainly seen and experienced "like at first sight" (which is no small thing, I think), and there are people I've met who became family in that very first instant, even if I didn't always know it at the time. (I can be inattentive at the best of times. It's a feature, I tell you, not a flaw.)

Discuss, muse, theorise… basically have at it. Challenge me. Give me stuffs to ponder.

Or, alternatively, my cousin is on the look-out for stories of when you were away from home (100-200 words, moral or lesson optional). So if you find the concept of love at first sight far too boring, tell me one of your travel stories. Bonus points for those who can combine the two! (And by bonus points I mean, er, you win nothing particular.)

simple != easy

 journal, writing life  6 Responses »
Aug 142008
 

A real human is somebody who feels and who expresses his or her feelings. This may sound easy. It isn't.

A lot of people think or believe or know what they feel — but that's thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling. And being real is feeling — not just knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but it's very difficult to learn to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for communicating nobody-but-yourself to others, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't real can possibly imagine. Why?

Because nothing is quite as easy as just being just like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we are not real.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've loved just once with a nobody-but-yourself heart, you'll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become real is: do something easy, like dreaming of freedom — unless you're ready to commit yourself to feel and work and fight till you die.

ee cummings, "A Poet's Advice"

you've chased the sun around the cote d'azur

 journal  Comments Off
Aug 072008
 

This evening I made it home, fired up with the energy that a brisk walk in the chilly drizzle will give you, ready to launch into my daily wordcount, ready to catch up on all the useless stupid little errands that conspire to eat all my available time… and then I read about the girl in the window (link courtesy of dooce).

Now I feel like I've been punched in the solar plexus.

there's a hole in my bucket, dear liza

 away come away, journal, shadow bound, writing life  2 Responses »
Jul 292008
 

It's been a hectic few days weeks months, to say the least. I could sum up, but there is too much and, in the paradoxical way of these things, too little to bother. Cryptic, I know, but it is born of weariness.

The other night, being deprived of internet, I tallied up my work hours for the past little while. Turns out I've been working 90+ hour weeks for the past two months. No wonder I'm wearisome. So last night I rewarded myself with a bath, a bubble bath no less, which was a touch less restful than it might have been, owing to the cat's attempt to play with the bubbles. He didn't actually fall in, but it was a very near thing, and he's still not talking to me.

Today is my weekend from the dayjob, and, being the glutton for punishment I am, I intend to use it compiling the revision list for Pledged, so I can start in on the gamma draft for that and deliver it to the publishers sooner instead of later. I would of course prefer to rest, but if I want to eat next year, I should be virtuous. My ploy is to work slowly on two different projects, the gamma draft of Pledged and the alpha draft of the faerie novel, at the same time. That way, a change being as good as a holiday, I will get a holiday every day!

Or spontaneously implode. One or t'other.

is it the apocalypse yet…?

 journal, shadow queen, writing life  2 Responses »
Jul 222008
 

Right, yes, hello…where were we?

There is a stack of paper 400+ pages thick sitting beside me, otherwise known as the copyedited manuscript, which I am tentatively calling done. Barring acts of random deities, genius ideas at two am, a plague of mice ravenous for a meal entirely of paper, or what-have-you, this stack of paper will be going in the post … er, soon. I missed today's post, and am flying to Melbourne for the day tomorrow for dayjob purposes. What do you think? Is it worth the agony of carting the stack on the plane and finding a post office in Melbourne, or do I attempt to make it to the post office on Thursday, in between knocking off work and closing time? Dilemmas, dilemmas.

The malware issue is not fixed, precisely, but I have narrowed in on the issue. I have found the registry key which was changed, but I may or may not have found whatever snippet of code did the changing. Just in case I didn't find it, I have set the firewall to be extra-vigilant at monitoring that set of registry keys. At any rate, I have not been plagued by hijacked websites for a whole day, which is promising. And a relief, because I was very, very close to reformatting the hard drive and resorting to a clean install.

There are probably other things, but I am quite braindead right now. So instead, have a photo:

I took this snap on my walk in to work about a month ago now. It had been raining and drizzling for over a week, and the colour in the sky as the sun cleared the hills was breathtaking.

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