The sun is shining in my eyes...

It's almost Christmas Eve and there is snow on the ground! It was a bit dodgy trying to leave my street this morning as we are not blessed with gritters (being unworthy dwellers of a dead-end road) but once the ice of two and a half streets was navigated it was plain sailing.

Although I don't enjoy driving in snow (driving back from Newcastle on Sunday was exciting for all the wrong reasons), I do love snow itself. Chum #1 and I took the dogs out for a walk before bed, as is our wont, and we decided to extend it because the snow was fantastic, the collies were hyper, and it was just a brilliant, cold, and shiny night. I hope that the snow stays until the 24th at least - I've taken the day off work and it would be nice to get a long walk in -- through snow -- before the madness begins! (I have a ham to bake, among other things - oh, God, the WRAPPING!!!)

I have bought a number of books in advance of the holiday, so at some point I will have to structure some kind of reading list otherwise I'll dither and end up re-reading books while I try to decide which new ones I want to read. I also need to get back on the wagon with the unnamed one as that ground to a halt with illness and work being busy. (I am trying to resist my brain's idea of getting back into the flow by writing a short on a mad galvanist that I had a brain-tickle for. Although, amazingly, I did manage to get some articles from the 1800s about galvanism that will help the research. But still, resist.)

I need to clear the workspace downstairs again so that there's room to work, and I also need to update everything on the laptop as that hasn't been done since the 29th of October, just before I went on holiday. Jobs, jobs, jobs. ::sigh::

I've got editing planned for this week; I'm at work on Monday, and then it's writing for the rest of the week and into January. Cobbling together bits from pbackwriter and Jeff Vandermeer's Booklife I've fleshed out a business plan for 2010 as well as looked at breaking things into weekly tasks, and creating a five year plan. I have to say that I found the mission statement idea (from Booklife) *really* difficult to do. Interesting, but difficult, and it still needs work.

So, what about you? Do you do a business plan every year? Do you break things down into small tasks to make them more manageable and trackable? Do you have a different method for organising your life, or do you just go with the flow? Inquiring minds want to know.

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.

What the hey?

Why is it that, when you have stuff to write and lots of editing to do, you suddenly get a new idea and a preface. (With absolutely no idea where the story's going to go from there?)

Enquiring minds want to know.

Update & a Question

The Bank Holiday's over, the car passed its MOT and I'm back at work. Yay.

Haven't finished the second draft of 3's Company yet. My housemate is finishing off her Master's thesis and we've had to go turn and turn about on the pc so we're both chugging along, just not as quickly as if we had a computer each. So far, I've added just over 8k in new words (same point in the first draft was c.15k as opposed to 23k in 2nd) so that's part of the reason it's taking so long.

Had an idea for Contraband, which raised a question that I hope someone will have an answer to: if you can use vegetable oil for biofuel (after conversion) could you use human fat in the same way? i.e. after liposuction, could you take the removed fat, turn it into liquid and then convert it into a biofuel? Does anyone know?

Cheers :D