Inauspicious

Hello, hello! Day one of my writing-binge. Y'all are hungering to hear about a 10,000 word day, huh?

Well, I didn't have one.

But I don't feel too bad. I didn't really expect to have a super-productive night. Here's why:

I had to go grocery shopping and household-stuff-shopping after work. What with holiday throngs (at the drug store, even; who's buying their loved ones disposable razors this season? Shower caps? Fungicide?), that took a while, as I expected it would;

This is Scott's last night in town, he leaves for our hometown tomorrow morning. So I had dinner with him at the Saturn (I know, I know; all I freaking do is go to Pergolesi, and the Saturn, and Bookshop Santa Cruz, and the bagelry, and the burrito place. It seems pathetic to you that I lead such a small life. It'd seem even more pathetic if you realized how geographically close to my hosue all those places are. Bookshop is the most distant, at about six blocks away);

On the way back from Saturn we ran into D. (who made me a collage for my birthday. D. makes good collage, and now I have one hanging on my wall, composed with me in mind). So D. came over and we talked to him for a while. Then Scott ran away to do work for one last night, and D. left;

Meg called. Sweet Meg! I'll see her a week from Wednesday. I have until then to finish this novel. Half a novel. Meg is my deadline. She is a lovely, lovely deadline.

I had to wrap Xmas presents, so I can mail them tomorrow, so they can get to my parents sometime in mid-January, probably, knowing the USPS;

I had to take a shower because I didn't do so this morning, and Saturn fries are greasy, greasy, greasy (and good, good, good);

I had to write an outline for my novel (at least the next 10,000 words worth or so). That meant I had to think about what happens next. I have all these characters, in all these different places, with all these things they're trying to accomplish. Most of them hate each other, or are at least trying to thwart each other. So tonight I worked on plotting. My method for "plotting" (at least in this case) is to set events in motion that will cause most of my characters to collide cataclysmically (yes, I have a larger plot arc for this novel; yes, I have an end in mind; yes, I have specific things I plan to accomplish. This collision will be a fun way to get my main characters in place for the final act, however). I feel like I'm playing that story-telling game, you know the one, where one person starts the story and puts the hero in the most impossible, deadly position imaginable, then passes the story-telling duties on to the next person, who has to extricate the hero, and then puts him in another horribly difficult position... an ongoing game of "Ha! Top that!" Except I'm the one who gets to top it. And I'm gonna, too. I'm having fun. But writing the outline took a while;

I had some email I really needed to answer. Maybe that was just procrastination. But some of this email has been sitting there for, like, weeks. The people I'm responding to probably forgot who I am.

Then I sat down to write, and did 2,000 good words (completing one and a half of the twelve sections of the outline I wrote tonight). But, as I explained, there are mitigating circumstances, and this paltry word-count is not as inauspicious as it seems.

Tomorrow there will be no shopping, no dinner out with friends, no need for outlining, no distractions. I will get home from work, I will eat some food, and then I will return to Marla's cold, cold city, where black ferris wheels turn, where hail and killing frosts reign, and where monsters cower in fear of things far more dangerous than themselves (like my protagonist)...

Well, if you've read down this far, you get rewarded with a plug. My story "The Fallen and the Muse of the Street" is up at Strange Horizons this week. Go on and read it, if you want.