Procrastination Station

Just over a week ago I finished part one of the current WiP, full of glee at getting a good 53K words and eager to start on part two. But I found that, having finished a distinct part without making an immediate effort to start the next section, it was difficult to set hands to keyboard again. First I had to re-read my outline and make sure that it fit with the changes I'd made to the outline of part one as I wrote it. Then I had to make a few more notes about things to include, stuff I needed to know. After that I had to add more worldbuilding to my guidebook for future reference. And so a week went by without any new words being written on the actual book itself.

Now, I know that this was all procrastination station.

(a) I've done part one. Yay! [Euphoria]
(b) What if it sucks? [Gloom]
(c) I need to start part two! [Confidence]
(d) What if it sucks? [Gloom]
(e) Oh, crap. I know where part one should have started (and it's not where I did start it). [Gloom]
(f) Maybe I should just tweak... [Gloomy indecision]

Yesterday, I finally broke the deadlock and tapped out 339 words. Not a lot, but a damn sight more than zero, and today I tapped out some more.

On a personal level, I think one of the causes of the inadvertent hiatus was the fact that when I got to the end of part one I just stopped. What I should have done was write something, anything, even just one sentence of part two - just to get the ball rolling so that I wasn't staring at the Chapter 15 heading and a blank page.

How do you deal with coming to the end of one section and picking up another? Do you stop dead at the end of a chapter and start a new one with ease? Do you tease out a few lines of the new section so that when you come back to it you've got a thread to hang the rest on, or do you face down the blank page with ease and bash out the 1812 Overture on your keyboard without a backward glance at your notes?

Have you ever stopped at Procrastination Station? Enquiring minds want to know.

[metrics|weather] Part 1 (of 3) is done!

It clocks in at 176 pages/ 53,951 words and it is done. Now all I have to do is write parts 2 and 3 (and do them in less words than part 1 which went massively over aimed for / predicted word count.) So, I have joy joy feelings today!
Part 2 will start tomorrow and we'll see how much I deviate from the outline for that section. (Quite a lot I would imagine, if part 1 was anything to go by.)

Also, the sun is shining. Not in an aggressive, summery fashion but in a take-the-chill-off-the-autumn-day kind of way. Good dog walking weather (or cat, if your feline is so inclined.) Unfortunately, I am at work - a tea break does not an afternoon off make, alas. But still, we soldier on, fueled by mini cheddars and a kit-kat. I think everyone must have been released from lectures at the same time as there were queues for everything except the vending machines. Good job I'm only having soup for tea.

You never know who you're going to meet at work...

It's not often that you queue for coffee - in the student cafe at work - and meet one of your favourite authors; but that's what happened to me this morning when one of my colleagues introduced me to their friend - visiting from New Zealand - and it turned out to be Nalini Singh!
We had a nice chat over drinks (mocha and hot chocolate respectively) and, agreed that Anne Bishop is a fantastic author that we both like, along with Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey.

I did have a moment of (internal) fan-girl squeeage, and as it was internal I hopefully didn't come across as too much of a dork.

Anyway, I thought I'd share that as it's totally brightened up my day. You just never know who you're going to meet at work!

The autumn rains are here

Autumn sort of sauntered in during the last week of September; now we're in to October it's decided that, yes, it's really here to stay so it had better get on with knocking all the leaves of the trees, and raining to complement the chill air. Hats were worn for dog walking last night.

At the weekend we took the dogs out for a long walk and the beaters were abroad sending pheasants into the line of sight of men with guns. The collies weren't bothered by the gun fire, which was good, and Bear only barked when he heard the spaniels barking on the other side of the hedge so that was good. We did nearly get hit by low flying (fleeing) pheasant (or they could have been partridges - not sure about that) but they managed to clear our heads and make a break for the woods.

As it is autumn, and we had inspiration from the huntin' and shootin' set, we had pheasant for dinner last night and it was fantastic. Chum #1 made it. Saute leeks in a bit of butter and line an oven dish with them; rest your breast of pheasant on top; sprinkle on pine nuts (it's supposed to be chestnuts but we couldn't get any fresh and the tinned were £2 which was a bit much); add a knob of butter and wack it in the oven. For the gravy, you drain off the juices from the bird and add some chicken stock and port, thicken with cornflour and you have the most gorgeous tasting sauce ever. Of course, we'll need to test the recipe again--just to make sure it works a second time, you understand!

Autumn. The season of soups (roasted pumpkin & butternut squash), stews (cawl), and pies (beef and stilton crumble). Nom nom nom.Tonight we will be having the glory that is the baked potato, covered with some of the Italian bean stew we made in bulk the other week and froze. Tastiness will be mine!

In other news: I've figured out how Tilly makes a vampire's shielding spell permanent and have written the sequence out longhand so that will need to be added to the draft. That should be done today and then I can do the changeover of notes so that I carry the outline for Part 2 around with me. 52k and rising.

October has arrived, the nights are chill and early dark with felines prowling in the woods

It will soon be time to hunt for pumpkin and butternut squash to make my roasted autumn soup with, adding in my Tuscan herb mix for a last hint of summer. It will also soon be time to dust off the slow cooker so that I can set stews/ curries/ soups cooking while I'm at work. There are few things better than coming home to a house that's full of the smell of glorious food; especially as the house will probably be cool. We managed to avoid lighting the first fire until November last year - whether or not we'll manage it this year I don't know as we've already started using the hot water bottles (last night was pretty chilly.)

Took the dogs for a walk before bed, as per usual, but this time the cat decided she wanted to come to! So, at a much slower pace than normal we tramped onto the reserve, into and through the wood (this was scary - her tail was fluffed like a bottle brush the whole time), then down the trail and into a small copse before heading back out onto the main trail and back up to the house. Everyone was extremely pleased with themselves and all of the four-leggers went straight to bed because being a border collie/ cat is pretty exhausting really. :-)

I am lergified. Unlike last year I managed to fight off the germs in the first week of students being back, but I succumbed this week to the aching head and lethargy (my bed, she calls to me) but, the show must go on and all that. My writing productivity has declined day by day this week in an almost embarrasing fashion, but I am on chapter 13/ 48K and I will--at the very least--finish section one this weekend.

Anyway, how's your week been? Good, bad, indifferent?

How's your week going?

Listening to: The Most Dangerous Predator: Twilight Original Score - Carter Burwell

Location: Orthanc

Another week draws slowly to a close and I'm absolutely cream crackered. Which wouldn't be so bad if this was the end of the *really* busy week at work, but that's next week so I have the joy of being completely, insanely, don't bother having any breaks busy yet to come. All done in high heels because the smart work trousers were not made for people who are only 5"2 (and you really don't want me to hem things if the hem is meant to last more than one day) so there will be aching feet/ head/ throat from all the talking/projecting against background noise.

Thank god it's only this bad once a year.

I'm off to the North again this afternoon to visit the pater, and apparently we're trogging off to Carlisle tomorrow for a little jolly (but at least I can sleep in the car on the way.) Other than that, I plan to lounge around and do some reading and writing this weekend. I'm lending my dad some C.S. Friedman books, as well as Mark del Franco and Anton Strout (books, not the peeps themselves, obviously) so he'll have something new to read along with the Charlie Stross books I got him for his birthday. And with any luck he'll have some books I haven't read and we can swap.

So, does anyone have anything exciting planned for the weekend?

Update
Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 5,786
Present Total Word Count: 46,021
Goal: 80,000

(Almost) all the leaves are brown...

The last four days have been nice and relaxing and full of sloth. There, I said it - I was bone idle. My brain was fried so I've spent most of the past four days re-watching Supernatural and reading a couple of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels (crime with a paranormal/ Deliverance (as in exorcism) twist.) Good stuff, and nothing like the books I'd been reading prior to that, or anything like the book I'm writing so it was a bit of a headspace holiday.

I'm now on Day Five of the holiday and I thought I'd better get some writing done, just to get back into it before I head back to work; but the drain man's just arrived so I'll blog first and write when he's done. (Victorian drains - you've just got to love them. Sigh.) The dogs are bemused, the tap's running in the bath, and a no-doubt fragrant odour is wafting in the hot sun in as welcome a fashion as a bloated rat at a barbeque. Hopefully, most of my neighbours are still at work.

In other news...I've re-visited a flash piece that didn't work too well and I think I've figured out how to make it better (and, by virtue of it being me, longer.) I've sketched out the first page or so and will work on that as a 'down-time' piece to give me a break from the unnamed one - I shall have to think of a working title for the unnamed one at some point; at 40+K it ought to be called something other than Unnamed UF, eh?
In other, other news...it's boiling. Autumn arrived with crisp air and hazy light, the sound of rooks in the trees; and now, the sun's out, the air is muggy and yellow (thunder on the way perhaps?) and the collies are restless - only one walk so far today, so they're feeling fractious. More exercise for me later then. :->

Back to the day job tomorrow which is good, although it does mean that I'll have to leave the house early as the kids are back at school from today so the roads will be clogged with the school run if you hit it wrong. So I need to be on the road for 07:15 at the latest. ::phbbbbt:: And in a couple of weeks the universities crank up to speed to welcome all the new and returning students and we'll all hit the ground running and won't really stop until mid-October when we'll all collapse into jelly-like heaps and gibber quietly in our offices. But it's all good fun, so bring on the circus!

Right. Enough chit-chattery. Time for some work.

I'll leave you with an update of where I got to last:

Project: Unnamed UF
New Words: 2,392 (over 2 sessions)
Present Total Word Count: 40,235
Goal: 80,000 (although, the first draft is likely to be waaaay longer as I'm pretty sure that I started it in completely the wrong place. Nice to know that there are some constants in life.)