The WAL

So it’s been three weeks since I’ve managed to blog. Mostly because I have a hard time finding the extra time even once per week when I’m working days. It’s hard enough to find the time for the daily journal entry and the novel. I’m moving back to nights now, so maybe things will improve for the next few weeks. With the jump to Full Supervisor at work, my rotations are four weeks long, mostly, so I should be a little extra productive for a bit.

Not that March hasn’t been really productive writing-wise, but mostly on the novel. Updating that:

I’m trying hard not to step into editing mode, but more or less deleted the last couple of hundred words I wrote yesterday and finished the scene a little differently than I originally planned. I’ve done that a couple of times recently and been happier with the result. It is starting to look like it’s going to go somewhere beyond the 90k target, which is fine. It will be however long it will be, and probably longer in the second draft.

In other works, I’ve just finished the first draft of a 25,000 word novella I’ve been working on for a wihle. Quite a while, I suppose. I started it in December and put the first 10k words in fairly quickly but then switched to just working on it on “weekends” when I started Dragon Summer, so it’s only been going up by a thousand or so words per week. The story I had been working on longhand (The Labyrinth of Xarg) is finished and transcribed and I have started the next novel, putting in 100 words or so a night by hand and I’m up over 3,000 so far.

As to the submission deadline, well, it’s looming. I’ve picked the four stories to go out, I just have to figure out where they’re going. And yes, April 1st is close. Will I make it? Probably not, but I don’t think I’ll be too far behind. The first one might even go this morning before I go to bed. Maybe.

So that’s it. No rant, no complaining about earth-shaking events or strange behaviours of my kids. I will note that I think the weather has finally turned and my backyard looks like the aftermath of a snowman battlefield. Dripping and melting winter corpses everywhere.

It’s not at all unusual for me to be this far behind in my podcast listening, but I finished listening to the tenth and final episode of Space Casey, posted by the author on only the tenth of February, on my early morning commute home from work.  The question show is loading to my mp3 player now, along with a bunch of other podcasts to keep me entertained and informed.

I probably should apolgize to Christiana Ellis (the author).  I heard a promo for Space Casey back in the fall, book marked the site and everything, but didn’t subscribe to the feed at the time.  I found it again a couple of days before she posted episode nine, so actually I’m pretty close to being caught up.

The point is that I’m disappointed it’s over.  Christiana is a tremendously talented writer and this podcast was a lot of fun. It’s more or less family safe and hilarious.  Sounds like there will be a season two at some point, but it can’t come soon enough for me.

The funny thing is, even with the mad rush of 4,300 words so far this month and breaking the halfway mark on the first, I still feel like it’s an uphill thing.  Maybe I’m just over thinking things.  The end isn’t exactly in sight, and it’s only the first draft, anyway.

So, it’s bad enough that our Federal politicians behave worse than a pack of unruly four-year-olds.  I’ve never seen a group of junior kindergarten students be so inconsiderate of each other trying to speak as our representatives in Ottawa are on a daily basis when parliament is in session.  Aside from the boos, howls, and hisses when someone from the other side of the floor is trying to speak, they can’t even shut up when someone from their own party has the Speaker’s ear.  “Hear, hear.”  “You can say that again.”  “Woo-hoo.”  Okay, maybe not that last one, they’re mostly lawyers and businessmen, after all.  They do applaud and thump their desks too much.  Gods.  Shut up and let each other speak and things would go a lot faster.  The worst thing ever to happen to parliament was putting in television cameras.  Now they spend all of their time posturing for the cameras instead of getting things done.  They’re never happy unless they have something to spew at each other.

Well, the latest entertaining scandal is the supposed offering of a million dollar life insurance policy by the Conservatives to a dying independent MP in order to secure his vote on a crucial issue when the Cons were itching to oust the Liberals and become the new government.  This supposedly happened several years ago, but is just coming to light now in the about to be released book by the widow of said MP.  As one might expect, the temperature is high in parliament the week or so with everyone yelling at everyone else.  Our poor, assaulted PM has had enough, though.  Stevie is a sensitive sort and wants the Liberals to shut the hell up so he can go back to being king, I mean Prime Minister.  He’s threatening legal action against the opposition Liberal leader and a couple of his major cronies.  Quick version of the story here.  Jeez, Stephen, if you’re that sensitive about things, why did you go into politics?  It’s just fuel for the fire.  Launch an investigation and live with the results.  Either that or take your potato chips and go home.

Writing a nice, action packed sequence right now and I put more than a thousand words in today.  Not sure if I’m torturing my main character enough in what I’ve got plotted out, though.  I don’t seem to have such a difficult time being cruel to my minor characters, though.  The end is still in sight on the novella, but only a little closer than I thought a week or so ago in spite of the writing I’ve done since.  I think I’m within spitting distance now.  Finished the second draft on another story and I’m down to four weeks to get three submissions out.  A total of 24,000 new words for the month of February (not counting editing and plotting), of which 19,000 were for the novel.  Only about 700 less than January in two fewer days.  And yes, sometimes I over analyze or count things too much, but it’s fun.