All Day
May 4
First, a brief random recap... I've been busy at work, and having fun in the evenings. Thursday night Susan and Heather and I went to Picante for margaritas and good Mexican food and wonderful talk. Then we came to my house and watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which I liked more than I expected, though I still didn't like it much -- musicals are just very seldom my thing. I enjoyed bits of it, though. That was it for social-funtime, though.
Heather and I got our Strange Horizons t-shirts, and Heather got a mug, so there's much good SFnal stuff in the house.
I'm sad about George Alec Effinger's death; I never met the man, but I liked some of his work very much; really loved his Gremmage stories, especially "Heartstop". I'm doing the layout for his obituary in the next issue of A Certain Magazine...
I did 180 sit-up-crunch-ab-things last night at the gym, and it didn't kill me! And my muscles aren't sore today! La!
Last night at Au Coquelet I wrote about a thousand words of a new story -- call it the Food story, I guess. It has a title, actually, but I'm superstitious about those; I don't write the title on a story until the first draft is finished, that's the last thing I do... hence all the lovely euphemisms. Though often, of course, I have no idea what the title is going to be (like with the Frog story, which is now almost definitely going to be the Frog novel). I'm less superstitious about novel titles for some reason... I mention and write those with impunity. Maybe because a short story has less psychic mass, and so is more easily derailed, while it's more difficult for a little neurotic superstition to combat the inertia of a novel-in-progress.
Anyway. I'm clearly incoherent this morning. Let's hope the fiction-writing goes better.
Today, Saturday, is my catch-up day; and also something of a Model Day. I intend to work today the way I would work if writing were my full-time job, and give you a glimpse into my imaginary hypothetical schedule for such a day. Here goes:
9:30
Get up, look around blearily from the couch. (Why did I sleep on the couch? Because if I sleep in Heather's room with her on the weekends, I find myself in a lovely snuggly cave, and I stay there with her until, oh, 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Which is normally a nice way to spend a day off, but this is a workish day, so I slept on the couch, where sunlight in my face wakes me up fairly early). Take a shower, other ablutions.
9:45
Make some tea. Boot up the computer. Put in an Alanis Morissette CD. (An occasional, secret vice. Not so secret now) Check e-mail. Answer an editor who's invited me to submit to an anthology (note: I do not expect this to be a daily occurrence, even when (if) I'm a full-time writer. But it happened today). Start writing this journal entry.
10:05
Actually get to work, with determination to sit here writing until 11 at the earliest.
11:00
Well, it's 11; but I had to go down stairs around 10:45 to answer nature's call, and Heather was awake, so I talked to her for a bit, and then made more tea, and anyway -- I'm going to spend another 15 minutes writing before I do something else.
It's already beginning to heat up in my garret. I'm going to have to leave and work elsewhere later, and return when the heat is less brutal... but we'll get to that in due time.
11:42
Finish morning writing session; 2200 words on Rangergirl (and now I'm very close to the sex scene, which I think I'm ready for; excited about, at any rate). Now I go do essential but non-writing-related things for a bit (reading, errands, paying the landlady, etc.)
12:37 p.m.
I come back upstairs to revise some short fiction. Whee! Specifically "Romanticore", which I want to send out next week.
1:30
Finish revising (whoo), get story ready to go out in the mail. Read for a while.
2:30
Catch a train to Au Coquelet. Write 400 on the food story. Have lunch, read. Write 400 crap words on another new story, which goes nowhere; let's be generous and call it a "discovery draft".
4:30
Catch train home. Get home around 5:00. Look back on the day's work and declare it good. Try to figure out what to do with the evening...
Words written since February 1, 2002: 61,950
Words written since last entry: 4,000
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