Day 4 of 'I'm with the Band'

Inching slowly forward with new writing, total word count now 73, 534 words.

73,534 / 90,000 (81.7%)

238 pages semi-edited with big chunks highlighted where I need to go back and rewrite.

If this toothache keeps up, then my main character will develop once soon.

Anyway, getting my head back into this manuscript means also getting my head back into the music that has inspired me.

This story has to be edited/written with the soundtrack of the 80's playing in my ear.

On the morning of Day 4, I also finished reading Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. Whoo- hee. Talk about sexual tension! When I finished it I went back and read the first chapter and the last chapter again to see how connects the two. Highlyrecommended - this is going on my keeper shelf.

Well that's the summary of Day 4, now I shall finish of the second half of day 5.

Twelve Days of 'I'm with the Band'

I've been inspired by Jenny Crusie and her technique of focusing for twelve days on a work in progress. Anything that will keep the procrastination demon locked in his cage, and has a finite goal at the end of it.

So I announce that the next 12 days I will be focusing on completing the first draft of I'm with the Band. It will be like a mini tour! As this 12 days includes 7 days that I don't need to be at my day job, it is an ideal tiime to focus on it. It will take me up to the 7th January, and I imagine will be a great way to kick off 2008!

I've read the story so far, completed an outline of what's written and what's missing, and in my hunt for this information through a variety of notebooks, I've discovered one hand-written page of this story that stops mid-sentence. It doesn't even seem to start at the beginning of a scene, and as the next page goes into a scene from Diary of the Future, there must be pages missing from this scene. So it look like I will be rewriting these scenes. But it's very frustrating knowing that there was handwritten stuff out there somewhere which didn't make it into any computer version of the story. I must get more organised and dedicate an indiviual notebook to each work in progress.

The current word count is 74,843 words. The word count is going to fluctuate as I will be cutting words as well as adding words but I envision that the entire first draft will be around 90,000 words.

So here goes: Day 1 of I'm with the Band

74,843 / 90,000 (83.0%)

Dead technology

Well after decluttering my office, and the laptop, I'm afraid to say that neither appears like the photos anymore.

Three days after the decluttering when I thought the laptop was humming along nicely, it proved me wrong by dying completely. All I would get at startup was a grey screen. So the laptop is back at the shop (hopefully whatever's wrong will be covered by the extended warranty) and I've hooked the old monster computer up to the internet, and seriously thinking of buying an LCD screen for it, because the monster takes up the whole desk.



Dorkus the cat is not impressed. He can't take up his usual position on the desk (as above) and has retreated to the desk behind me.

In moving the monster computer back out here, I've got printers on the floor and stuff all around. Hopefully, it will look better again by this afternoon.

I'm sure that Mercury is not retrograde at the moment, but I've been hearing of a lot of computers going kaput. A technical mutiny perhaps?

I can't believe its the last day of September already. I'm hurtling towards my 40th birthday and another Nanowrimo is just around the corner. Seriously, where has this year gone? It'll be 2008 before we know it.

I plan to do Nanowrimo again - I like the impetus and the momentum that being part of the Nanowrimo community gives me and my writing. I have a very vague idea about a young woman and an obsession with classified ads. That's all I have so far. In the meantime, I received my feedback from the Chick Lit competition and have been absorbing all that Jenny Crusie had to say at the RWA Conference, so I'm rewriting and reshuffling and polishing Diary of the Future for submission. Also using that story to participate in Candy Haven's Revision Hell workshop. So October will be over in a flash for me as well, because I'll be busy with work and rewriting.

Decluttering

Visitng Aargh Ink the other night, I found out that Jennifer Crusie is decluttering her office, flylady style. It's a relief to see pictures of other people's clutter because then I don't feel so bad about everything that is accumulting in my writing room. At least I can see my floor, if not my surfaces. And the bookcase is generally neat. My problem is the boxes around the perimeter full of paper with stuff on them, and who knows what else. Finding someone to store these in an organised manner is my dilemma. If they do even need storing.

So to tackle this clutter 15 minutes at a time, I'm going to start with this desk. This is more a storage desk, than a working desk but it would be nice to see the surface. My big plan was to use this desk as a collage workspace. Trouble is my cat Dorkus has taken a liking to it, and whenever it is clear (or not) he sits upon it, blessing it with his cat hair.

He likes sunning himself on top of the blue storage drawers, right in front of the window.

15 minutes later and I'm not done yet. And I have to wonder how much hair one furry little fella can have. When I moved the blue thing, there was cat hair everywhere so the vacuum cleaner came out.

Now half an hour later, the desk is clean althought there is still some stuff that I have to find a home for. Just not on this desk!

I've also cleaned the oven, vacuumed the dining room/kitchen floor in preparation for the mop, vacuumed the hallway and lounge room. Definitely took longer than 15 minutes but just found out the landlord's are paying a visit tomorrow to check what needs fixing so not too soon at all.

However, I think I'm now going to hop down to the chemist...my hayfever is playing up as a result and that I can live without.