In Which Some Words Must Be Avoided

28 March 2003

For once, it paid off not to get up and jot down the story notes that started darting around my head as I was falling asleep last night. I started thinking about them. And then I poked myself mentally: get up. Noooo. Get up. Come on. In the morning you'll wish you had. Nooooooo. My journal is all the way out in the living room, and I'm not sure I can walk that far before falling asleep, and if Timprov finds me leaning on the washing machine sleeping, he's going to be very upset. I'll remember it in the morning. Do you promise? Yes, yes, all right, I promise.

And I remembered. Go me. Fighting with the subconscious was worth it, because I doubt my handwriting would have been very legible, and also now I can make my notes in clear enough form that I know what I don't know. Instead of writing "Genevieve" and wondering if it's supposed to mean something beyond "this story has some chick named Genevieve in it," I can write, "This story has some chick named Genevieve in it." It's good to know when you're being cryptic and when clueless.

I have less than 25 pages of edits to type in on Dwarf's Blood Mead, plus a little more with the new scene, and then I'll be done with this draft. Yay! I like being done with drafts, and my shoulders are pretty Nixoned up after yesterday. It's not that I didn't do anything but work. It's that I didn't do much but work. I also went to two grocery stores and Target, made shortcakes and salsa (but not together, and I didn't eat either one), did a ton of laundry, finished Bones of the Earth (thumbs up), and talked to the C.J. That sounds like kind of a lot. But it was all dominated by edits to DBM, and I didn't even finish the silly thing.

I might finish it today, but it's going to be a pretty social day. It's David's birthday (yay! Happy birthday, David!), and it looks like there are all kinds of things making it happier than he thought it might be, including but not limited to strawberry shortcakes from/with me. They are already sitting on my bag, because I had the thought last night at around 7:00: what if this is the last time I remember the shortcakes until I'm at David's? So I put them on top of my backpack right away, just in case. Anyway, so when I get back from David's, I should have a little time before Amber gets here, but she's coming straight from work here, and she gets off earlier than most this time (flight attendant). So lots of social time. Which is good, but which may not finish the draft of DBM today; ah well.

Words and phrases I am not allowed to go near any more: seemed. For a moment. Sighed. (I've been writing a YA, people. The main character is a teenager. Whenever I write YAs, I have The Sighing Problem, and also sometimes The Eye-Rolling Problem. It just seems like when you're a teenager, you're not usually in enough control that you can say, "Hey, cut that out and here's why," or if you are, you usually lack the poise for it. Sighing and eye-rolling ensue. But Soldrun is in considerably more of that kind of control, even without the poise. So enough with the sighing.) Also, she's relieved a lot. I'm not really sure what to do about that.

Anyway, well. I started reading China Miéville's The Scar yesterday, but I didn't have the time to get very far into it, so there's more than plenty for the train ride. Until then: more editing.

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