Me, me, me
Jan. 4th, 2007 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt's my birthday, and I shall do as I please. Including getting stray and unexpected things pushed through my letterbox at unexpected times; this pleases me inordinately.
I was up here checking my e-mails when the posty-noises came. But the post had been already, so we went to look, Barry and I: and behold! Birthday gifts. Little kitchen gadgets - a pastry brush, a pastry mat, baby whisks, like that - and a newspaper. A newspaper! On the very day I'm allowed to take the time to read a newspaper, do the crossword, do the Su Doku, everything! Oh, joy...
So I'm going to do that, over More Coffee. I might go into town and drift around the shops, making-believe I have money to spend; but it's windy out there and I'm old now, so I might just not bother. I might stay home and read a book. Or go to the pub and read a book. Or I might go to the pub with some work, but only if I really really want to.
Work: last night, I finished the first draft synopsis for 'The Dragon-in-Chains' (I'm starting to wonder about those hyphens; do we prefer 'The Dragon in Chains', O my LJ?) and its sequels. That's the basic plotting (well, fading later into story-arc) for three novels, plucked from nowhere in a week. Don't ask me how that happens, it just does. 'Course, the books as written will start at variance and move wildly further from this laid track; books aren't trains, to run where and only where you tell them. If I were a transport buff, I would stretch that metaphor (is it a metaphor, when you say one thing isn't something else? which it conspicuously and absolutely isn't?), and books would become, oh, something wildly unlikely and free, hot-air balloons or some such, and the whole thing would go 'poof!' and collapse under its own weight of absurdity.
So: because I have missed word meters, my own and other people's, this last month or so; and because I wrote c 300,000 words last year, which was almost unparallel'd; and because I know that a peak is not a target, and it's stupid to set goals that are too ambitious, but I'm a writer and so by definition must enjoy the whole palate of tastes that come with falling short - the bitterness of failure, the sourness of defeat, the salt of tears, the sweet of rot, and, oh, something for umami - therefore I am aiming at no less than that this year. So far, then, the year-to-date:
Or, in pages:
...and we'll see how far that goes. I won't post these often, but at the moment I don't have a big project to pursue, so it seems handy to have a counter that will pull together all the little stuff. Not that there will be much this month: work for the next week or two is revising last year's urban-fantasy novel, and then a redraft of the play, neither of which will yield countable pages. I shall start by falling way, way behind my target. Sigh...
I was up here checking my e-mails when the posty-noises came. But the post had been already, so we went to look, Barry and I: and behold! Birthday gifts. Little kitchen gadgets - a pastry brush, a pastry mat, baby whisks, like that - and a newspaper. A newspaper! On the very day I'm allowed to take the time to read a newspaper, do the crossword, do the Su Doku, everything! Oh, joy...
So I'm going to do that, over More Coffee. I might go into town and drift around the shops, making-believe I have money to spend; but it's windy out there and I'm old now, so I might just not bother. I might stay home and read a book. Or go to the pub and read a book. Or I might go to the pub with some work, but only if I really really want to.
Work: last night, I finished the first draft synopsis for 'The Dragon-in-Chains' (I'm starting to wonder about those hyphens; do we prefer 'The Dragon in Chains', O my LJ?) and its sequels. That's the basic plotting (well, fading later into story-arc) for three novels, plucked from nowhere in a week. Don't ask me how that happens, it just does. 'Course, the books as written will start at variance and move wildly further from this laid track; books aren't trains, to run where and only where you tell them. If I were a transport buff, I would stretch that metaphor (is it a metaphor, when you say one thing isn't something else? which it conspicuously and absolutely isn't?), and books would become, oh, something wildly unlikely and free, hot-air balloons or some such, and the whole thing would go 'poof!' and collapse under its own weight of absurdity.
So: because I have missed word meters, my own and other people's, this last month or so; and because I wrote c 300,000 words last year, which was almost unparallel'd; and because I know that a peak is not a target, and it's stupid to set goals that are too ambitious, but I'm a writer and so by definition must enjoy the whole palate of tastes that come with falling short - the bitterness of failure, the sourness of defeat, the salt of tears, the sweet of rot, and, oh, something for umami - therefore I am aiming at no less than that this year. So far, then, the year-to-date:
| |
3,841 / 300,000 (1.3%) |
Or, in pages:
| |
12 / 1,000 (1.2%) |
...and we'll see how far that goes. I won't post these often, but at the moment I don't have a big project to pursue, so it seems handy to have a counter that will pull together all the little stuff. Not that there will be much this month: work for the next week or two is revising last year's urban-fantasy novel, and then a redraft of the play, neither of which will yield countable pages. I shall start by falling way, way behind my target. Sigh...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Chillies! A belated reply.
Date: 2007-01-05 07:06 pm (UTC)Re: Chillies! A belated reply.
Date: 2007-01-05 08:24 pm (UTC)I don't want to invade your privacy, so I won't ask for your address: I do appreciate how much you enjoy living in the City that my family comes from, though. The North East is very special.
I fear I should have written 'It was indeed I', not 'me' in that first sentence. Sigh. Grammar is so damn' fluid these days... Oh - and 'Dragon-in-Chains' makes me think of the pub down the road from where I lived in Watford as a teenager: 'The Horse-in-Chains' was at the foot of a long hill on the London Road, and in the 19th Century horses and chain harnesses were rented from there in the winter, when ice made the road treacherous and extra strength was needed to get the mail coach up the hill. Isn't history fascinating? (The beer in the '70s, alas, was Watney's.) Whether you decide to keep the hyphens or not, it's an enticing title.
Babbling now. Will shut up.