especially if you live in a tall house at the top of one of the only hills in the area, during a lightning storm.
this past sunday night, we had a pretty cracking storm cruise through overnight, filled with lightning flashes and that deep, grumbly, boulder-cracking thunder. woke me up at 3am* and lit the bedroom. cool to watch, being all snuggled and safe in bed.
turns out, the house got struck, blowing our Dog Watch hidden fence unit across the garage, and frying our garage door opener, my desktop computer, our television, an outlet and lights in the bathroom, our phone (and internet) and our cable TV line.
frustrating and confusing as this might have been, it was all completely counterbalanced by not having to have a conversation with the Fire Dept while they hosed down the ashes of our entire home.
our house is 100 years old with 4 lightning rods on the 2 roofs and those things certainly saved us; so much so that we didn’t even know about the bulk of the stuff until the next night, because we were busy enjoying our planned activities in the garden and working in the house on other stuff. never bothered to turn on the tv or computer or even pick up the phone.
needless to say, though, there hasn’t been much on the writing front. however, i’m reading a very cool book right now that has me feverishly jotting notes in prep of a story idea i hatched back during my Viable Paradise week, which is getting me very excited.
oh, and i finished the draft of another short this past weekend, currently titled “The Aesthetician”. i had many different stops and start on this one, but this finally came out.
so, yeah, lightning rods are good.
*impressive, given that i’ve slept through fire engines hosing down a housefire across the street
**leant to me by a future biochemistry scientist of some reknown (and my sister-in-law)
i’ve been bad at posting the last couple weeks, but i’ll blame end-of-semester grading and other work for that.
however, i have been writing and such:
RoE’s latest draft is being left to cool for a month or two*
i’ve just finished the third draft of a new short story that i can’t figure out a title for yet. the story is the result of a kick/challenge i was given in a conversation some weeks ago, for which i am deeply grateful, as it was a lot of fun. it’s currently out to beta readers**
i’m finding myself thinking more and more about the YA novel I’d outlined some months ago (currently called Darkstar, for lack of anything more interesting), so that might be next
or one of a couple other shorts that are kicking around
rejections have almost stopped, which means its time to reshuffle the deck and get my recent stories out to a new batch of markets
i’ve also been hemming and hawing over the purchase of the new ASUS EP121, and not just as a toy. it boggles my mind that the idea of a slim, pen-based tablet capable of viewing a full page of text has taken so long to appear. it seems like a sure-fire win for the education sector. i’m expecting to use it for essay grading to drastically descrease my time and, hopefully, increase the value to my students. yes, it’s more expensive than an iPad, etc., but it seems quite worth it for the much greater functionality.
did i just convince myself?
* actually, it was my brain that needed cooling over all the changes i’d made and have still to make
i just finished the typing/dictation for Running on Empty, which means it’s all on the computer now, which is excellent.
The ‘almost’, however, refers to the fact that while Dragon well and truly saved my hands and wrists from my normal post-first draft carpal tunnel suffering, it isn’t perfect. it’s very, very good, but i rushed a bit on Monday and the recognition yielded up some really quite laughable results, as I’ve discovered on skimming back.
so, it’s all on the computer, but it’s not really finished. i’m going to take a short break (the biggest problem i’ve had so far with Dragon** is the earphones, which inevitably press the bows of my glasses between my ears and my skull**) and then see if I can focus on ONLY the sections that were dictated, and hold myself to just the language fixes, not any more revision.
i would not suggest holding your breath.
* and the revision that goes along with all that i do
** aside from the fact that it comes up with the most amazing alternatives to my phrasing of the exclamation point punctuation mark. i say “exclamation point” and Dragon types “escalation point” or “summation point” or “estimation point” or “this commision point” or “exhalation point” and so on. everything else is pretty amazingly accurate (?, *, -, em dashes, etc.), but not “!”. weird.
*** and without any hair to speak of, there’s no extra cushion.
i didn’t make it to the end, but that’s sometimes the way of things. still, i am on page 238, so only 9 pages to go! i would consider pushing on, but good sleep has been evading me for several days, so i’m hoping to change that with an early night.
so, no, i haven’t actually been sick for the last 4 weeks, but i have been slow in getting back here. why? well, it’s the end of the semester, so teaching gets busier, and i’ve been fighting with a particularly insidious little problem in the web work which keeps feeling like three steps forward and two steps back.
i have also not stopped typing (RoE) and writing (new short story, untitled, lots of fun!). i haven’t always done as much as i’ve wanted to, but i’ve done it. there’s more to that, but i don’t have much time right now.
why not? because when i finished writing the first draft of Running on Empty back on the 22nd of March, i told myself i would have it all typed in by the end of the semester, which was almost 8 weeks away, then.
well, today is the final day of classes, so this is it. since i don’t have to teach today, i have a fighting chance of getting the last 39 handwritten pages typed up.
39 pages typed up in 1 day?
yep.
but that’s nearly 14000 words!
yep.
you’re delusional.
well, perhaps, but not so much in this case, because i recently purchased a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking and, while it’s certainly not perfect:
begin quote get up comma end quote he snapped at Gleason comma still holding tight to the man’s ankle period begin quote get up exclamation point end quote
equals:
“Get up,” he snapped at Gleason, still holding tight to the man’s ankle. “Get up!”
i’ve gotten rather used to it, and it to me, so i can do more than a 1500+ words in an hour when things are going well. of course, there are also days when i only manage 1500 in a whole day because I need to revise a plot point that no longer makes sense or i have to spend time finding and aligning various puzzle pieces i’ve left for myself in the writing.
this weekend, though, i worked my way through the last major (i hope) and the rest is a wild race to the climax, which should go relatively smoothly.
one of my favorite lines from Bill Cosby’s ‘Himself’ recording.
not so much fun when it’s an accurate description of my present state; nonetheless, as unpleasant as being sick is*, it always serves to remind me of how fortunate i am to have my health as much as i do.
so there’s that.
* unable to concentrate for extended periods, getting way behind on homework, not writing or typing anything of consequence, filling every trash basket i pass with a handful of dirty tissues . . .
seriously. in know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and i’ll admit to being fairly done with winter, but a late-breaking, heavy winter storm on April 1 just makes me happy.
and the shoveling doubled as today’s exercise, so there’s that . . .
and for fun, here’s a couple pics of our trusty mailbox surviving the winter with a little help:
Taken on the first day of Spring
I felt like a true Mainer putting this guy back together with duct tape and a couple screws.
Poor guy got clipped, but he stuck out the whole winter like this!
at least, that’s how i did it, as i’ve been typing up Running on Empty. i had forgotten just how much of a doorstop i’d started writing at the beginning of the book.
i think it’s all very cool stuff still, but i’m trying to Deppo my work sooner rather than later, and i spent the morning being ruthless about what was actually adding to the story.
sadly, that meant that i pulled out 102 pages.
on the other hand, it means i am free of that baggage.
i can always add pieces back in if necessary, but right now, this is the right thing for the story.
wasn’t easy, mind you, but i’m getting better at it.*
* says the guy who wrote 102 apparently unnecesary pages before he smartened up.
the somewhat frustrating truth for me: i need to outline.
i spent a couple hours on Audrey, but it was very quickly apparent that i hadn’t thought it through well enough. the story is solid, even powerful if i may be so bold, and the initial tone feels right, but there are a number of things i have to have right in my head before i can get much further.
so, whilst i ruminate upon the possibilities for Audrey, i’ve turned to typing up Running on Empty, which will keep me busy for some time and probably not yield anything worthy of posting about.
not that that’s really stopped me before, though, eh?
