Cleolinda everywhere

1. I fought off several attacks of The Blahs today, but ended up getting a lot done. I'm trying to sort out the first three chapters at this point--rearranging the old material into logical concert with the new, and so on. Let's put it this way: I wanted to finish this by my birthday, December 14. Today is November 13. I'm not going to do the actual math, but we're talking twenty chapters that have to be filled out and whipped into shape in roughly thirty days. When you consider that I won't be able to write every single day (that's just Murphy's Law talking. Also, you've got Thanksgiving, and I know at least one or two days will be given over entirely to midnight-showing Golden Compass squee), and that I'd probably like to have a little time just to revise things on a word-by-word level... we're talking one chapter per day. Some chapters'll probably take an hour's run-through; the last chapter is going to involve a lot of raw drafting. Really, I just want to have it in a complete, readable format so I can show it to some close friends and, hopefully, my agent, with the understanding that I can still polish it at my leisure and double-check some research details for a little while, while it's shopping around. I've been working on it for four years now--I'd like to give it six months in a drawer, but it had a year or two in a drawer, unfinished, as it was.

But it's an arbitrary deadline. I made it up. Why is it such a big deal?

Because I'm going to be twenty-nine, which is almost thirty, and this is what I've wanted to do my entire life--write novels and, with any luck, publish them--and I haven't done it yet. If I don't draw a line at some point, any point, when is it ever going to get done? This point's as good as any other point.

2. Unfortunately I have a headache now, but it comes with the territory.

3. Questions that are not the most helpful to ask a writer: "So... who's the audience?" "Uh... people who like to read this kind of thing?"

4. I'm saying this here so as not to pick on any one person, but: ARGUING IN CLEO'S JOURNAL BAAAAD.

5. In other housekeeping issues, enough people are emailing me about the Free Rice thing (which I linked!) that it sounds y'all want a little graphic at the bottom of the page. I'm worried about reaching a saturation point with the reminder graphics, though, so I'm thinking of combining all the click-a-day sites into one graphic. Would this work for people? There's tabs at the top of the Hunger page to the others.

( Linkspam )

So. Another backlog of linkspam, but what're you gonna do. After struggling all week in front of blank paper (what's that old line? "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood stand out on your forehead"?), I finally sat down today and decided to write out the story from the POV of three major(ish) characters whose storylines are giving me hives. ( Read more... )

Also, since I'm in a Halloween mood--the most marvelous sentence in the history of the English, from John Stagg, "The Vampyre," The Minstrel of the North (1810): "It was then asserted, that, in several places, dead persons had been known to leave their graves, and, by night, to revisit the habitations of their friends; whom, by suckosity, they drained of their blood as they slept."

( A sampling of my backlog )

So. I actually got a fairly good scene handwritten today, plus a smidge of work the last two days each. Eh. Then Sister Girl came home from work and, having just discovered that we do get HBO On Demand last night, wanted to watch several episodes of Flight of the Conchords. I don't know if y'all have seen this, but it's basically about two geeky New Zealanders, Jemaine (Jemaine Clement) and Bret (Bret McKenzie, aka Figwit) who have--are?--a band. And their hapless, anal-retentive manager Murray. And their one fan. And an on-again, off-again girlfriend, Sally, who is the subject of two of the best songs in the entire series, IMO: the Prince-inflected "Beautiful" (I'm guessing at titles here) and the Smoove B-esque "Business Time" (warning: not entirely safe for work). I would also recommend the hip-hop mugger song and the mermaid song--the songs remind me a lot of Jonathan Coulton, except dweebier. On purpose. And in a good way.

( So very, very much linkspam )

Mmm, watermelon. I think Infamous is on cable later tonight (Capote's somewhere Monday afternoon) and I'm reading the newish issue of Vanity Fair right now, and that's pretty much my plan for the day.

( Famous doesn't look like a word anymore )

Okay, before we start with the linkspam catch-up, I have a musical request. One of my top favorite songs ever, seriously ever, for reasons even I can't fully fathom, is the Divinyls' "Pleasure and Pain." Here is the original, 3:50 in length. Now, I have been looking for a long time for an extended version, which I did find (here's that one, 4:32 in length). Problem is, the quality's kind of patchy. Does anyone have a clean, clear version of the extended version?

( Potterspam )

( Another backlog of linkspam )

Soooo, let's see. First the cat escaped and we cursed at each other and beat the bushes for an hour and a half; that was a couple of nights ago. (I've noticed that the cat has been unusually civil ever since, as if he/she/it is sort of embarrassed about what happened; instead of opening doors just for the fun of watching the dogs escape, s/he's been sitting very patiently in front of the door, possibly maoing, until a human arrives and rectifies the situation.) Then today, the Enemy Insurance Agent called my sister about her wreck--( It took him three weeks to come up with this? )

So... that's my week so far. On the upside, I do have free passes to a preview of Stardust next week.


LJ is finally back up and talking about what happened: "Let the angst and false entitlement begin!" Also: What really happened to the LJ server? Take it with a grain of salt, folks.

I did make those icons, by the way. ( Potterspam; spoilers )

Linkspam proper: ( Soap actor surprised to find himself dead )

I'm being such a lazy schmo today. I'm supposed to be revising poems, but I've gotten myself turned around so badly on the night-day thing that I'm desperately-but-pleasantly sleepy right now.

The exam went fine, thanks for asking. I suppose I could have written more, but it was late, and I was tired. Quinlan was cool about the paper, so I think I'm all right in that regard. Of course, it's too short, but he's said before that he'd rather people go under rather than over, or too few sources rather than too many. Seriously, can I have all my classes with him?

I have to write a 3-5 page paper for Crunk--a critical review of my own writing style. I'll post that here when I'm done (under a cut--good God) just in case you're curious to see what that entails. Put it this way: I've had to do it before, as an undergrad, and the second semester I wrote one, I titled it "Portfolio 2: Electric Boogaloo." It's not as dry as it sounds.

Couldn't sleep for shit last night, as previously stated. ( Guess what I ended up reading? )

( Christmas vacation, as it tends to be, is Bookapalooza over here )

Over at SAST, because I am a link whore: new Johnny Depp pics; "Tom Cruise" invites me to go see "The Last Samauri"; tasty Peter Pan pics; cameo ideas for The Hobbit; what you get for the Lovecraft fan who has everything; get your "Legolas Dies" and "Frodo Is My Babydaddy" t-shirts while there's still time.

Icon of the Day: This is not the soda you are looking for...