27 August 2002

Days left to deadline: 4.

Days left to final draft goal date: 2.

Pages of The World Builders written (total): 158. (Chapter separation done, some fiddly bits remaining.)

Went to the library yesterday afternoon and got a ton of books. The Burglar in the Rye was 50 cents -- if we keep checking the library book sale pile, we're going to get the whole Bernie Rhodenbarr series for less than $5. Other than that, the books were all temporarily free. The ones I got on their new interlibrary loan system, though...if I lose them, they're $115 apiece. I don't lose books. It'll be fine. It's still a little scary, though. There's three of them. Eek. I feel the need to quite carefully return them and get receipts when I'm done.

I returned the Lévi-Strauss unread -- it's still on my library list, but I looked at it and thought, I'm not going to be in the mood for this in the next three weeks, and I can just fetch it back again later and not hold it up in the system. It's really nice to be able to determine when I'm in the mood for abstruse theorizing and when I'm in the mood for, oh, say, another Kate Wilhelm novel, like, oh, say, Defense for the Devil. Reason #3612 why I'm not in grad school. (Reason #3611: when I'm presented with a theory and asked to treat it as if it was knowledge or truth, I get cranky. Very cranky. We don't have time for the other 3610 reasons.)

I fixed the Caitlín Kiernan link in yesterday's journal. Oops.

Hey, my birthday is over! It ended yesterday, a month after it began, with The Last Present. Timprov likes to give me The Last Present. Then if there's something that would just make my birthday complete, and nobody gives it to me, he can; and otherwise he can just come up with a normal birthday present. This year it was the two-CD set of Les Mis. I haven't listened to it yet. I'm going to put it on in a minute. We did a medley of the songs from it in my junior high choir. Mrs. Haight, the music teacher, made no bones about what we were singing: "In this song, a guy got this woman pregnant and then left her." If only she'd been there for Neil Diamond....

Yesterday, none of us here were all here. I took a survey at dinner: "Anybody here all here?" No. Nobody. I hope we're all doing better today, but I'm not sure of it. Nobody screaming in the night last night, that should help. We were all kind of wandering yesterday. Had to send Mark to the store twice to get the ingredients to make spaghetti and salads. Not complex spaghetti or complex salads, either. It's just that none of us checked the cupboards very thoroughly before the first trip.

Silly us.

The newspaper had headlines about how unthrilling Ozzfest was, how uncreative. Shocking. Stunning.

Silly paper.

I've been waffling, as I write this, between wanting to get some of the fiddly things done on The World Builders now and waiting for my last crit on it from Thomas. There are a fair number of fiddly things to be done, clarifications and a few tweaks to bring out relationship stuff and all that, but I think I need to leave it alone for at least a little while, regardless of when Thomas has a chance to read it. I need a break from it, mentally, so that I can make all the last stuff on the list go well and can have a worthwhile final polishing run-through. I should probably do the edits on "Another Hollywood Miracle" soon, but I've been doing so many edits, and frankly, edits get at me after awhile if that's all I'm doing. I need to do something new, I think. So I might get back to the Not The Moose Book this morning, or I might work on a short story of some flavor. We shall see.

I added another novel project to the list this weekend. I dreamed that I was critiquing a murder mystery Zed had written, and it was really cool. So when I woke up, I wrote to Zed and told him I'd be happy to crit it if he wrote it. But then I started thinking about it, and I wanted to write it. Zed has graciously given me permission to use any ideas that I only dreamed he came up with. I don't want to write it immediately, of course. But it's kind of cool to have an idea that is definitely and for sure not speculative in any way. (Island, my historical novel idea, which is not set on an island, frightens me: I fear that it might turn into historical SF or historical fantasy when I'm not looking.)

So...as usual, plenty to do. I have research books to read for the Chinese project and the Not The Moose Book. Editing to do. New writing, I hope. And in two days, WorldCon will be upon me, and in four days, this book has to be no-matter-what done.

Deep breaths.