Of This and Other Worlds

Otherwise known as my "hey, I'm back from camp and I feel like a zombie" post.

Why a week away from home with no cleaning duties and three delicious meals served daily should prove mentally and physically exhausting, much less feeling like I'm about to get the mother of all colds, I cannot tell you. Suffice it to say that it is so.

I was also hoping that the week away from home would persuade my brain to stop going all OOH SHINY over Touching Indigo and prudently switch gears back to Wayfarer, which is after all under contract and therefore the more needy of my attention. Unfortunately, this did not happen, though I have confidence that it will once I get to know Timothy and Linden better... which, despite all my note-taking and emotional mapping and poking about on Getty Images looking for lookalikes, is not going to happen until I start actually writing them.

Some good things happened while I was on vacation, however: I got passports for myself and three kids with zero waiting time (thank you so much, risti, for the suggestion about doing the online application -- I think it made all the difference), I had Bubble Tea with erinbow (who is probably still laughing about the O_O face I made when the first tapioca pearl came up the straw), and we successfully converted my crib-sleeping toddler to a bunk-sleeper with nary a hitch.

Also, I came back home to find that fuseno8 had posted about our meeting in her blog, with a nice picture of the two of us and everything. Thank you, Betsy! It was a pleasure, and if you should return to town I shall take you out for cream tea.

Well, the house is woefully a-clutter since we have been moving Oldest Child and his enormous collection of toy farm equipment into the room that used to be the baby's, plus trying to unpack several suitcases and do two loads of laundry at the same time. So I must stop trying to catch up with my F-list and get to work, which means I am about to borrow a page from kalquessa and make this general appeal:

If you've written (or found) anything in the past week that you think I should see, please put a link to the relevant post in the comments.

That would help enormously, thank you.

Oh! And one more thing. I re-read HP Book 7 while I was gone -- taking it slowly and carefully this time, with particular thought given to criticisms I've heard from other readers, as well as my own initial sense of dissatisfaction. And I am happy to report that this time around, I thought it was brilliant. More about that later, when I am no longer surrounded by guilt-inducing household debris.

*hurries off*

Today's Word Count: 3600.

O_O

I can't shake the suspicion that the story is really boring so far (I'm not used to writing psychological drama -- I keep thinking something ought to explode), but wowzers.

Will hang onto that happy feeling for the next 45 minutes, as I suspect I'm going to need it to get through this week's House.

Today's Word Count: 2726/2000

That's including a few paragraphs cut and pasted from stuff I'd written earlier, but I made a point of writing 2000 new words today and I'm quite happy with that.

I've joined a group of Fast Drafters setting their own goals, and I think my aims are more realistic now: 2000 words a day, six days out of seven. That should give me 60,000 words by the end of the month -- not quite a full draft yet, but definitely a big chunk of it. And writing at this speed feels more natural and comfortable than the 20 pages a day required by the original Fast Draft method -- I really tried hard to make it work for me, but it felt too much like falling downstairs.

Off to watch the Doctor Who S3 premiere now!

I've just heard back from the editor who's been looking at Knife, and she feels that this revision has finally dealt with the problems that were making her hesitate. She plans to pass the manuscript on to her boss for him to look at (with the caveat that he is very busy right now, but she will keep checking with him and try to get me a response as soon as possible).

It's not an offer, it's not a sure thing, but it's a definite step forward. I am heartened.

Inspired by lizbee's recent adoption of a meter for her own novel project, I proudly present one for Knife:

39,000 / 100,000 (39.0%)

This is assuming the book actually does end up at 100,000 words. Depending on how much more I cut and the length of the new stuff I put in, it may well be shorter.

Chapter Nine is going swimmingly so far, which is nice for a change.

It took me a whole week, but I am now in business again, with a brand-new computer (yay!) and the old one fixed. Turns out it was just the fan to the power supply, much as I thought, and that the hard drives were not affected, so I didn't lose any data. Although I do have a lot of reinstalling software and general tidying-up ahead. And, of course, a whole lot of catching-up on my f-list and e-mail, too.

Sadly, after this and other unexpected delays, I have had to give up hope of having the reedit of Knife completed in time for the SCBWI-MI Fall Conference in Kalamazoo, MI so I could hand-deliver it to Very Helpful and Patient Editor. It's now looking like it'll be closer to Christmas before I'm done, and I shall just have to mail it in the usual boring manner. But I am still going to the conference, D.V. I don't suppose anybody else on my list is interested/planning to go? Anyone? Bueller?

lydaclunas has been here for the past few days and we've been having mucho fun. Lots of Doctor Who has been watched, among other things...

I'll have more to post soon, I hope.

I won't be posting for a week, since we're off camping. (No, not rustic in-a-tent camping, more like hanging out at a nearby resort/conference centre kind of place where our meals are all provided and we sleep in air-conditioned comfort. My biggest challenge will be deciding whether or not I really want to be venture out in public wearing a zebra-print maternity swimsuit. I suspect my nerve is likely to fail me there.)

Anyway, y'all take care and don't let HP fandom explode without me (oh, wait, it already has done, never mind).

First things first: Happy Birthday, jalara! And congratulations on the new job!

In other news, to those on my flist still hoping to receive some kind of intelligent reply to their comments or e-mails, I'm afraid you'll have to wait another day or two -- sorry! As I'd feared, my throat was so painful last night that I really didn't get much sleep, and today I won't even be making it out to church (I had to ask my mother to call another pianist on my behalf, as my voice is now nonexistent), so I think that today my few functioning brain cells will have to be devoted to keeping an eye out on my (much healthier) offspring.

Thanks for your patience.

Happy birthday to me, and all that, she said in Eeyore-like tones of utter despondency.

Tonight I let the kids play games on the computer for half an hour or so, and one of them shut the computer off mid-game by poking it randomly with his toe. I scolded him and turned the computer back on, only to have the other kid cancel Scandisk on me halfway through the scan. Then I saw the oh-so-comforting message on the screen:

Windows Protection Fault
You will need to reboot your computer.

Press any key to continue...

Needless to say, pressing any key did not continue; it never does. So I rebooted again, and this time the computer would only start in Safe Mode. I ran through various troubleshooting scenarios, all of which yielded nothing. Finally I resigned myself to reinstalling Windows from the CD, only to discover that the CD drive is inaccessible.

All together, now: Arrrrrrggggggh.

So, needless to say, I am not spending the evening as I had hoped, watching The Amazing Race with my husband and then settling in for a productive couple of hours of editing. I have been forced to squander it on a fruitless attempt to fix my computer, and now here I am downstairs on my parents' machine typing this message to let you all know that it may, once more, be a couple of days before you hear from me again.

Like I said, hooray and happy birthday to me. *gloom*

In the middle of an unusually busy and demanding week, my hard drive has decided to develop multiple bad sectors and generally refuse to behave in a most obnoxious manner. If you don't see me for a couple of days, that would be why.

Sigh.