6 June 2003

People, I am boring. I mean it. Dull, dull, dull.

Here's what I'm thinking about: the book. Also, having people to visit next weekend. Also, the book. Internally? Fascinating. Externally? Not so much.

Sometimes I manage to wrench the brain out of that mold a bit, and I think about the trip home and the move. And if you hand me a topic, I can go with it a little bit...but it'll probably come back to a) the book or b) having people to visit next weekend.

Ooh, and sometimes I really go out on a limb and manage to wonder what's reasonable to expect myself to get done in the next 17 days (that's the amount of time before I head out). The problem is, it's hard for me to tell how much I'm going to have to actually write in this section of the Not The Moose Book, because I have big chunks of it already written. So there are some new scenes, but some things that will just be connective tissue. How long will that take? I have no idea. What else can I reasonably do before we leave, factoring in the pre-graduation party and all other family-related festivities? I really don't know.

There's a part of me that just wants to carry the momentum of this section into either revising it heavily or working on the next section immediately. And momentum is not something to be ignored, but...other projects could be good, too, and taking a break of one sort or another would be nice. (A few people have referred to my "vacation" to Minneapolis and Omaha. Heh. Umm, no. I'm traveling. Vacationing is something different entirely. Vacationing doesn't involve the question, "How many book manuscripts should I pack?")

So, umm. Yeah. I finished reading Year of the Griffin yesterday, and the ending was...very neatly tied up. Everybody had somebody, or at least somewhere to go. It was the sort of ending that would have delighted me when I was younger, because then I could imagine stories about their children, but all of the pairing up was a bit much in this case. (I also must admit that I still wouldn't mind a book about their children.) And I started reading C.J. Cherryh's Explorer, which is all twisty and politicky, which is exactly what I expect of a Cherryh book. Makes me want to read Cyteen again. (Call me a masochist, but a fair number of things make me want to read Cyteen again. I know it's got its flaws. I love it anyway. Also, last time I reread Cyteen was in Utah, on the way out here, so it's a moving book for me, in the more literal sense.)

(I still think the title sucks, though. I didn't read it for years because I assumed it was a contraction of cyber-teenager, and that sounded like the suckiest thing in the world. Instead, it's just the name of a planet. The sucky name of a planet, I maintain, but that's not nearly so awful as a book about cyberteeeeeeenagers.)

See? If I give myself a tangent, I can wander off on it, but it always comes back to one of the topics, because I am -- I warned you! -- boring. And I stopped typing to think, "What should I write next?", and without any conscious thought the head turned to the left, to the outline, to glance at how I need to throw stuff together in the book today, who gets to be engrossed in his geekishness and who has her politics bite her firmly on the butt. And when Ilmarinen's awl shows up.

I give up. I will attempt to be un-boring later. Now, I will attempt to be clean and fed, and then, back to the book. Let's just hope I can manage the clean and fed part to begin with.

Is this like, "My dog ate my homework?" "My book ate my brain?" Maybe.