Monday, Monday

Okay, my week off is over and I am back at work...nope, no cheering from the stands; I could quite happily have had another two (or three, or-) weeks without coming back.

I got a minimal amount of writing done. Transcribed more of 3's Company; wrote more on Contraband v.3 and am now pausing that to do some worldbuilding that I should have done before I started. There's nothing like doing it all backwards, eh?

On the plus side, I did get a huge amount of gardening done and some allotmenteering, so that should be more maintainable now (i.e. the odd half hour here an there when I get back from work rather than an entire day on the weekend).

I'm trying to avoid starting the new novella until I'm done with the second draft of 3's Company otherwise it'll just sit and fester, unloved, on the hard-drive. In light of this, I've set myself a personal challenge to have the whole of the second draft done by Sunday 25th at the latest. So friends & family will have to put up with me being anti-social in the extreme for a week

Promotion

There's a new British Writers blog & Yahoo Group starting up, initiated by Alex Beecroft, among other authors:

'After envying all the writers on my list who always seemed to be going to RWA meetings or RT conventions, I thought that it would be nice if we UK writers could get together and do something en masse :) Strength in numbers, and all that - not to mention that if there's a con in Newcastle it's easier to post some stuff to a local who is going anyway, than it is to book flights and hotels to go yourself. (And, of course, the same at the other end of the country.'

Click here to read the full post at Alex's blog.

Edited to correct some appalling spelling.

Update

I'm on day three (or day 5, if you count the weekend) of my week's holiday. I've been up at six every morning to take the dogs for a walk, which has been amazing(!) and I've done a fair amount of work in the garden weeding, re-potting etc.
This afternoon I will have to repeat it (with more digging) on the allotment and get the rest of my runner beans in, as well as potatoes. I've updated the file for the novella (3's Company) and will be working on that today.

So far, I'm having a great time and it's just a shame that I'll have to go back to the Day Job on Monday. ::phbbbt::

When I get round to it I shall post pictures of the wilderness that is my allotment, I'm gaining ground what appears to be an inch at a time.

Have a lovely day!

Progress XXXII

Okay, quick updates.

Typing up/ editing of 3's Company is going well and I'm at 15,542 words on that.

Version 3 of Contraband is also cracking on, that currently stands at 2050 words so there's still a bit more to go. I may also have a go at writing this as a screenplay - someone I met at Alt.Fiction (hello Robert! ::waves::) suggested that, as it was a short story and I had been having problems, doing it as a screenplay would pare it down to the absolute essentials and could help with the stop-start problems I've been having. So, even though the story has picked up I think I shall have a bash at it anyway, because--why not?

I'm on holiday next week (yay!) so will do more during the day then, but for now, evenings are the key times (because I am really not a morning person!)
Late night at work for me tonight, finishing at 21:00hrs! But, hopefully the sun will still be shining then (doubt it). It has been a most glorious day, around 20 deg. C and tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be hotter. And I'm at work! How wrong is that, I ask you? 'Od's fish. ^O_O^

Three day weekend coming up!

Yes, there is a Bank Holiday on Monday! Yay!
I know I'm on holiday in another week anyway, so it may seem a bit bizarre crowing over a day off when I've got a whole week coming up four days later, but in my defence it has been a mad couple of weeks and I'm very tired ::smiles::

If the weather is nice I will no doubt be on the allotment for some of the time, but I will also make the effort to (a) do some writing, (b) tidy up my bedroom and (finally) get the additional shelving up that I need - must get the books out of the boxes & towers and onto shelves and (c) catch up on reading new books/ watching some films that I got for Christmas/ birthday and still haven't seen!

And update the blog of course, while interacting on various groups/ reading my feed reader etc. and so on ::blink::

The surveys at work went very well, we had a goodly number of respondents and we're keeping everything open until mid-May, at which point I and a colleague step back in to collate all of the quantitative and qualitative responses. Quantitative is quite easy as the program we used will do that for us, qualitative will mean drilling down into the results a way and putting them in a presentable form for discussion.

I still haven't given an update on Alt.Fiction which was a week ago tomorrow - I will get round to it (although there's nothing profound I have to say on it!) but likely not this afternoon as I am working in the first half (facing the public!) and being defoliated in the second so will be rather busy.

Struck a cord...

Got this from Karen Miller's blog. It's quite a long post and referring to the F&SF/ spec fic genre but I think it could also be applied to the Romance genre (and all it's associated sub-genres) because similar attitudes do seem to prevail (and explode across the blogosphere from time to time).
See Lauren Dane's site for a re-hash of a cyclical argument in the romance world (and RWR) and her response (heads up for the link came from Gennita Low's blog.)

To quote (or with my memory, more likely mis-quote) Jack Nicholson (and I've no recollection of which character he was playing at the time): 'why can't we all just get along?'

Wolfy

What Is Your Animal Personality?

Wolf Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

Pity about the your rather than you're, but nice picture!

Madness! Madness!

Well, yesterday at work was hectic from start to finish. We're running surveys of our web pages/ tutorials and potential induction videos and I hit the ground running and didn't grind to a halt until I got home. We had three laptops running three different surveys simultaneously - one of the laptops was very slow. We got a replacement and couldn't log in, so had to wait for the laptop's main user to come and log in (our system is migrating so the network has a dicky fit every now and again); then, we could only run one survey per machine so I had to run back to the office and alter the survey settings so that multiple surveys could be submitted from the same laptop. This brought me to 11:45 am!
For the rest of the day, nothing went wrong but there was more running around.

I am very tired today and in about 25 minutes I'm giong to have to do it all over again (although hopefully without anything actually going wrong!)

Update on Alt.Fiction to follow when I've got another moment.

Mood: Tired
Music: The show must go on - Freddie Mercury

Linky linky

Bit delayed, but finally got round to reading The Big Idea: Kate Elliot on John Scalzi's blog. Very funny story, very interesting.
I haven't read any of her books yet, although my Dad's read them all (and he's picky - but loved them) so I shall be adding her to the, dangerously overloaded, TBR pile. Actually, it's not really a pile, it's more of a mountain. With dust.

Progress XXXI

Good, but also not good.

Good: have typed up over 12K of 3's Company. Based on the original first draft total I'm 49% in, so only 51% to go, right? Wrong!

Bad: I've added just over 5K of new words so far, which means I'm not 49% through the hand-written version. On the 5K alone I'm over the 30K maximum and I imagine I'll be adding more new words as I'm editing as I go. There will be cuts, my pretties, oh yes!

Also, yesterday (when I should have been writing, gorammit) I caught up on all of the feeds (and oh, God do I mean all) in my feed-reader and ended up looking at editorrent's Redlines articles (go to the site, scroll down to labels and click on the redlines link). There is some good stuff there and in the other articles, on things to look out for in your writing and so on.

However, what I should have done was saved the entries and then looked at them after the type-up, during second edits. Why? Because I found that immediately after having read some of the more pertinent posts (pertinent to my own writing) I began to self-correct what I was transcribing/ editing. Not a bad thing necessarily, but I do need to get this transcribed onto screen (which will make editing easier) so speed is important in the first instance.

The articles are very good and interesting though--as are the comments--and I'd recommend people have a look at least!

News: I have bought a book on punctuation. Why? I have 'comma diarrhea' ::mopes:: 'S true. And embarrassing.

Mood: Full. Nice sarnie. Nom nom nom

Music: Snow White Queen - Evanescence

Alt.Fiction

Okay. I've booked to go to Alt.Fiction in Derby on Saturday. The schedule looks interesting, in fact the whole experience should be interesting because I've never gone to anything like this before, for any genre. Hmm. Perhaps I shouldn't have admitted that out loud?

The only question is, do I drive and park in the secure car park which is expensive but very secure or, do I go by train-which is ok in the going, but in the coming back may be intermittent as regards stopping at my station and will then involve either (a) it costs how much to get a taxi to my house? or, (b) please come and pick me up. pleeeeese or, (c) it costs how much to park at the station and then retrieve my car? ::choices, choices::