It's been pouring for hours, surrounding us with that half-light that tricks you into thinking this day has no time--it's still morning, or maybe it's evening, and what does it matter?
I've reached the bottom of my mug of hazelnut coffee. Just the last, cold, bitter sips. I've been knitting this morning as I watch the rain--two new coffee sleeves, destined for our Etsy store. I love calling knitting work. Propping my feet up, knitting and purling, "oh, I'm just getting a bit of work in." Marvelous.
Now the morning has become afternoon, and I'm still lounging around, pretending to get my thoughts together... but actually I'm avoiding my writing. I spent the last two days working on a scene that was meant to take half of a day. But it kept wandering around, this scene. Skittering away, deflecting my attempts to get to its end. And then the characters would go silent and stubborn on me. So I'd chip away at it, sentence by grinding sentence.
Oof. Not my favorite way to work. I'd rather be surrounded by all their voices and unable to keep up. I finally got through Scene Terrible, and it has its moments of loveliness, I admit. Even amidst all the dangerous "the writer doesn't know how else to convey this information so she's dumping it all HERE" paragraphs. There are a few of those...
The next scenes are far more promising, but I have this sentences are hard! mindset, so I'm rainwatching instead. And taking the last sips of coffee.
Oh, and contemplating the insane: I'm doing Nanowrimo again this year, my third time. I've had good luck before, winning in 2006 and 2008. I used it to leap ahead in my drafting pace for my main novel. But this year I'm doing something different: I'm trying out a completely new idea during Nano--a middle grade manuscript I thought up during August.
It will be a juggling, chaotic month: Nanowrimo with this new idea--its feisty characters, its twisty possibilities, its hilarious names. I have no idea what will happen in it, no clue to its ending. Just a handful of characters and a sense of the tone. But I can't wait, I can't wait, it feels promising and fresh and daunting all at once.
But I'll also be planning the next huge revision of my main manuscript... annnnnd working, very slowly, on its sequel. Oh, and knitting for the Etsy store. Oh, and visiting my niece again.
That's right. That's November.
My brain feels a little full--a lot of people chattering in there, bouncing off one another, and off all my knitting ideas, my dread of the day's work, my lovely memories of family...
Reason enough to absorb the peace of falling rain today, isn't it?
But there's hot apple cider to chase me away from the windows and back to my desk, to this next scene. So I'm living from rainshower to rainshower, slow sentence to the next, mug of coffee to mug of cider. It's that sort of day.
I've reached the bottom of my mug of hazelnut coffee. Just the last, cold, bitter sips. I've been knitting this morning as I watch the rain--two new coffee sleeves, destined for our Etsy store. I love calling knitting work. Propping my feet up, knitting and purling, "oh, I'm just getting a bit of work in." Marvelous.
Now the morning has become afternoon, and I'm still lounging around, pretending to get my thoughts together... but actually I'm avoiding my writing. I spent the last two days working on a scene that was meant to take half of a day. But it kept wandering around, this scene. Skittering away, deflecting my attempts to get to its end. And then the characters would go silent and stubborn on me. So I'd chip away at it, sentence by grinding sentence.
Oof. Not my favorite way to work. I'd rather be surrounded by all their voices and unable to keep up. I finally got through Scene Terrible, and it has its moments of loveliness, I admit. Even amidst all the dangerous "the writer doesn't know how else to convey this information so she's dumping it all HERE" paragraphs. There are a few of those...
The next scenes are far more promising, but I have this sentences are hard! mindset, so I'm rainwatching instead. And taking the last sips of coffee.
Oh, and contemplating the insane: I'm doing Nanowrimo again this year, my third time. I've had good luck before, winning in 2006 and 2008. I used it to leap ahead in my drafting pace for my main novel. But this year I'm doing something different: I'm trying out a completely new idea during Nano--a middle grade manuscript I thought up during August.
It will be a juggling, chaotic month: Nanowrimo with this new idea--its feisty characters, its twisty possibilities, its hilarious names. I have no idea what will happen in it, no clue to its ending. Just a handful of characters and a sense of the tone. But I can't wait, I can't wait, it feels promising and fresh and daunting all at once.
But I'll also be planning the next huge revision of my main manuscript... annnnnd working, very slowly, on its sequel. Oh, and knitting for the Etsy store. Oh, and visiting my niece again.
That's right. That's November.
My brain feels a little full--a lot of people chattering in there, bouncing off one another, and off all my knitting ideas, my dread of the day's work, my lovely memories of family...
Reason enough to absorb the peace of falling rain today, isn't it?
But there's hot apple cider to chase me away from the windows and back to my desk, to this next scene. So I'm living from rainshower to rainshower, slow sentence to the next, mug of coffee to mug of cider. It's that sort of day.
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ah, so that's the kind of work I'm doing today as well--Rainwatching! Bread is in the bread maker, bejeweled has swallowed a good deal of my thinking and I'm wandering around in the 1860's. I'm doing Nano too again but which book? too soon to tell.
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