Status

Pages: five so far. One before coffee, just to deserve it; two more in the Lit & Phil, and two more more once I got home, while the bigos heats.

I love this notion of the bigos. You do have to like cabbage (its base being red cabbage, sauerkraut and onion, simmered in stock, with various meats flung in and mushrooms, apples, prunes: a hunter's stew), but I do; and the notion is that you reheat it daily while the flavour matures, and every day you fling in something new. Today it's a couple of the Landjäger links (what could be more appropriate, when jäger means hunter?), tomorrow I think green beans, the day after that perhaps cherry tomatoes. Like that. The notion being, of course, that every day you take out more than you put in, so that it doesn't actually go on for ever...

In other news: I really do need to become rich. Either that, or stop behaving as though I were rich already, stop spending money I don't have on things I don't need. Stopping's hard, though; I've been trying for thirty-odd years and not managed it yet. A wise friend once said to me "Don't spend less, earn more," and I've very much taken that on board these last years. Except for, y'know, the "earn more" bit. Obviously...

Still, what with winter holidays coming up, you-all could buy more books? That'd make me richer. Oh, and while you're about it, you could pre-order my friend Daniel Fox's novel too, Dragon in Chains. You know you're going to have to read this sooner or later, so you might as well lay it in now. And give it to other people too. What could be nicer, after all, than an end-of-January gift, just when everyone's given up expecting...?

New literary agency

Quick side-note to those of my friends still looking for agenty representation: John Parker (late of MBA) and John Berlyne are setting up a new agency, the Zeno Literary Agency, "with a particular interest in science fiction and fantasy". Go for it, ye masses...

My gender, let them (not) show you it

I think I may have done this before, but I put this LJ through Gender Analyzer - and it's 79% sure I'm a woman. Is this because I talk about cooking and cats?

Apparently (by poll data) they're right 55% of the time. I have to say, I don't think a 55/45 split is good enough, on something where sheer guesswork gives you 50/50...

Smash! Bang! Lack of wallop!

It would seem that I can no longer write action scenes. At all. I do understand the theory, and I used to have the practice at my fingertips; my characters were effective, they made stuff happen.

Nowadays, those rare times when stuff happens, I only want to talk about the people watching or catching up later or investigating the consequences of the action. Urgh. Years ago, I did say that I was bored with plot - but I was joking, 'k? I didn't mean for the gods of textuality to take me seriously. They have stolen from me my ability to tell a plain tale at the cutting edge, and I resent that.

None the less, I damn well am going to finish this page, if nothing more tonight. On, on...

Seven pages a day (?)

Pages: eight. I still haven't decided if I'm really going on with this till the book eventually ends, which would need more than another week and I am weary already; but while the pages are there, I will grab them. Even though they're crap.

Also, I have a cold, I think. My throat is rough and everything smells unpleasant; I may not have pages at all much longer.

In the circs, I'm glad that all three of us agreed not to go out tonight on account of it's horrid and cold and wet out there. Staying in feels like a much better idea. I can watch televisions. Oh, yes...

[But do I dare move? Not that I'm being sat on, but Mac is sprawled in front of the gas-fire toasting his tummy, while Baz is hunched on the desk beneath the sun-lamp, and both of these will be turned off if I go downstairs. Cats will boo at me...]