Tuesday 12 November 2019

Where Have I Been?

It's been suspiciously quiet on the blog lately, which usually means that my life is too busy to even, or that I'm pregnant.

That one was for you, Mom! I'm kidding!

I'm busy, but not super overwhelmingly so.* I have a list of excuses, though, which I'm sure you want to hear.

No laptop

To misquote W. H. Auden, "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’." Actually, that's a proper quote, but I'm misusing the sentiment behind it. My laptop has been with me a long time, and after a few false alarms, I can happily declare that it's just not going to make it this time. Well, hello, Black Friday! I'll be seeing you very soon!

In the meantime, I am chained to our computer desk (note: our refurbished desktop is even older than my refurbished laptop was) like some kind of respectable office worker. Shudder. Gone for now are the days of sitting at my own desk, on my couch with my lap desk, or at Starbucks, trying to look like a writer.

Here I sit.

New phone (who dis?)

In theory, this would improve my productivity, but one must remember to factor in the "over-40 effect" of trying to learn a slightly different interface as an elderly person. I went from a Samsung S7 to an S10 and I might as well have gotten one of those screens from Minority Report.

When I do this, it just doesn't work. Image credit

NaNoWriMo

"The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It's the lack of a deadline." ~ Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month

I'm doing it. I'm twelve days in and I'm actually meeting my word count goals to write a novel.

It is not going to be a good novel. There will be no story arcs unless they put themselves in there without my noticing, and the characters are so far fairly unlikeable (though they do keep surprising me with the stuff they do -- they're all sort of terrible people, which I just couldn't see until they started surprising me by doing terrible things), and also, it's set in space, so there's that.

But, as God is my witness, there will be fifty thousand words by November 30th.

I have a cold


If I do not have 50K words by November 30th, it's because I have the sniffles and should be in bed, or at least on my couch, not propped up at this desk like an animal.






* My baseline is "overwhelmed", so...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aaaackkkkk!
from Mom

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