Drunken Owls and Other Delights

October was kind of wonky for me, writingwise. Ups and downs, sidetracking and procrastination, updates and changes, vacations and superbusy workdays. Again--I've learned not to let that bother me at this point, because there is no point of me doing so. I may have had a brief anxiety attack while attempting to fall asleep last night, in which my brain decided to play out the "I'm merely adequate and will never be a good author" and "I'll publish my work and not one person will ever read it" and all that typical bullshit writers go through. [For the record, I used my personal mental trick of angrily saying "No, Just STOP. Just fucking stop it." in an angry 'I'm-in-charge' voice to my anxiety brain. That seems to work quite nicely, actually.] As is usual, I'm calm and much more in reality upon waking the next morning.

It's probably obvious by now that I'm not even going to attempt NaNoWriMo at this point. I just don't have the time or the inclination right now. Too many things on the laundry list.

The whiteboard schedule looms, but I'm not scared of it.

Some writerly updates:

WordPress blogs. As I'd mentioned at Walk in Silence, I've decided to change these up a little bit. First, I changed up the layouts a bit to make them easier and more enjoyable to read. Second, I started thinking about the content. My blogs tend to be quite beefy in wordcount, and sometimes that makes sense (especially if I'm waxing poetic about writing processes or analyzing a favorite album), but I'd like to try out some shorter entries as well, which will work twofold: I can whip those out in less than an hour which means I can sneak those in at any time, and in the process, I may be able to do more updates throughout the week.

Current, Ongoing and Upcoming Writing Projects. I won't go into too much detail, as I keep forgetting that Posting About Best Laid Plans usually ends in Best Laid Plans Going Wonky. I need to do a bit of high-end scheduling and writing work on multiple things at once, and I'll leave it at that. Point being, you may or may not see me online as often, depending on what I'm up to and how far I get.

...aaaand, that's about it for now.

Other than that, it's a relaxing and mundane Sunday, in which I do all the errands such as food shopping, doing the laundry, and getting the car washed. Because I'm boring that way!

What is it with me and Best Laid Plans, anyway? I think it's partly due to distraction, and also due to finally giving myself some mental time off for a while. Well, that's not entirely true. I've been doing some serious longhand journaling and sorting some personal things out in the process. This is what happens when I choose to diarize something (is that a word?) and not share it with the world on one of my blogs...the voice changes from being "on" to being true to myself, unedited and uncensored. It's weirdly refreshing and eye-opening. It's been a relaxing couple of weeks, not having my creative brain in constant overdrive.

Still...I'm not exactly behind any schedule, because I currently don't have a schedule, other than working on my Walk in Silence outline. It's coming along...shockingly long at around 35 pages in the current iteration, though I'd say roughly 1/3 or so is filed with lists of songs and albums I'll possibly be referencing. The framework is coming along nicely, as I can better see how I'm going to tackle the actual writing--it'll definitely be in the form of a memoir, but there's going to be a lot of geeking out about music, radio, and collecting. I will admit that in the back of my mind, I already have an idea of a few publishers I'd like to send this to, but I'm not going to focus to seriously on that until I'm closer to the end of the writing part of it. I know of a few agents who might be interested too (I floated this book idea by them a few years ago at the SF Writer's Conference, and they all thought it was a cool idea), so I may go in that direction as well.

Nonetheless...after a few weeks of finishing off the Great Revision, it truly feels weird not to be focusing on anything trilogy-related. I've got a few possible story ideas in the back of my head that take place in that universe, but I'm not going to focus on them just yet. I did, however, write a few of them down on scraps of paper and add them to my Glass Jar of Ideas that I have on my desk. This is another idea I'd had, to create a "job jar" where I would write down various snippets of ideas, fold them up and toss them in the jar for further use. The jar is woefully scant at the moment, as I haven't given myself time to freeform anything new, but I'm hoping to change that in June.

So what is on tap for June '14, anyway? Well! Glad you asked.

--The End of the Mental Vacation. Sad to see it go, but it's time for me to get back on the creative highway and get going.
--Blog Entries. I'm over a month behind on them and, as said, haven't given myself time to work on any. I'll most likely be writing them during the week in between the WiS work (or during slow moments during the day, if there are any), and posting them on the weekend.
--Poetry. I'm ready to start longhand poetry again, for varying reasons that I may or may not go into at a later time. Not sure if these will ever be posted, but the main idea is, like the journaling, to do it on my own time, for myself.
--Art. Geez, I haven't been able to do this in a while, either! Hopefully I can plug in the Wacom and get some doodling done again. It's been WAY too long.

So yes...June promises to be the start of another wave of creativity. Here's to hoping it works out! :)

...this time in which the boys are given a bit more time to record and end up with a better, if not phenomenal, second album. And in which Parlophone is still trying to figure out how to package their EPs.

Ah, Friday...thanks for coming! It's been a mercifully short week due to a holiday and taking my birthday off, but it's been a BUSY short week here in BankLand. One coworker's laptop has decided to commit harakiri and another coworker sounds like she has the plague, so we've been a bit shortstaffed. Added to the fact that I'm reverting to work I haven't done in at least six months so I'm a bit rusty.

I'd say this week's been a bit of a wash schedule wise, but not entirely. I happened to get some serious editing/revision done on A Division of Souls and finished up Chapter 17, in which the opposing forces begin putting themselves into position for a Big Showdown later on. Now to work on Chapter 18, in which one of our heroes finds out where she stands in all of this. After that I'll have to do a bit more shuffling, pasting and editing...I've been grabbing about three or four chapters at a time, reordering and combining, and then working through the new files one at a time. This seems to work quite well, as many scenes end up getting fleshed out, and the slow, clunky and/or extraneous bits get cut out. This is similar to the way I wrote the second and third book--mapping out a few chapters ahead of time with some skeletal notes, and working on them. Not only does this make me focus more sharply on the prose and what needs work, but it also makes the process that much faster. Considering I started this revision late last year, I think I've made some serious progress in a relatively short time. It's also reminded me of what process works best for me.

I've been squeezing in poetry and photos where I can, so it's not as if I'm ignoring it. Plus I don't have too much to share photo-wise that I haven't shared already. I can of course post some of my older pictures, but I'd also like to take and post new ones too. As for the weekends--art and Walk in Silence in particular--it's been a bit of a busy month with other weekend events outside the house, so I get to it when I can. Music has been going well, as I've been gravitating to my guitar collection quite a bit lately. Just need to make sure I play with the Wacom and get some WiS work done too. I also need to update my WordPress site again. I'm a bit behind in my 'Blogging the Beatles' series, and there are a few other posts I have burbling in the back of my brain that I'd like to post as well.

Also, now that I have a replacement laptop, I can sit out in the living room with Emm again. I haven't been the last few days, mainly due to a few writing-related things that I wanted to take care of in Spare Oom, but I do plan on getting back out into the real world again. And as I'd mentioned somewhere else, I actually do like the setup of Windows 8, as it gives me that little bit of a roadblock to keep me from drifting off into internetland--by the time I get to the main screen, my brain is saying "what are you--GET BACK TO WORK, SLACKER!" and I return dutifully. :)

So! What's on tap for the next few weeks?

--Dutch paintings at the de Young Museum this Sunday (including this famous one!)
--Peter Hook (former(?) bassist of Joy Division/New Order) talking about his new book next Thursday
--Elgar's Enigma Variations at the Symphony next Friday

...and not much else, as far as I know. I chose not to go to the SF Writer's Conference this year (I may go next year though), so February is open for the most part. I'm hoping to get a good chunk of writing work done that month as well.


Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

Been awhile since I posted this kind of update...all kinds of things in the works in Joncland.

SFWC
The San Francisco Writers Conference starts this coming Thursday and I am PUMPED to go, writer nerd that I am. I've been working on getting some simple one-sheets together of a few of my projects (primarily the trilogy and Walk in Silence), which I will be using during the "Agent speed dating" segment on Sunday. Yes, the name sounds odd, but it's actually kind of neat--you get to sit with a few agents for a few minutes and try to sell them your book idea, and move onto the next one. They suggest bringing the first page and/or a summary that you can hand them if they ask. The schedule is up as a pdf at the site now, if you're curious. There's a lot of neat panels that I'm interested in, so it looks like it'll be quite enjoyable. Plus there are some lunches included in the price!

The good thing is that I can just hop on the 1 bus to and from the conference, so no worries about transportation. The one downfall is that I found out that President Obama will also be in town on Thursday afternoon (the day it starts) and will be one block down the street, so I'll have to make sure I can get there before the vehicle and pedestrian traffic is temporarily halted. I will, of course, give him a wave if I see him going by. :)

Writing in General
My schedule is still a bit wonky, due to wanting to get a good portion of both WiS and ADoS prepared for the conference, but once it's over I'll be back to normal. I have a few things in the works:

--Updating the Wordpress blog on a more consistent basis. This would also entail taking some time to switch it over to wordpress.org so I can mirror posts and do more with it.
--More poetry to work on. This would include perhaps gathering some together into a chapbook and getting it published at some future point.
--Rewriting the first five chapters of A Division of Soul almost from scratch. This one's a biggie...I'm preparing some big things for this one, and if it goes well, I'll continue with the rest of it.

Exercise
Going to the local YMCA for a bit of treadmill walking and bike riding continues apace. [Hey! I made a funny!] [No you didn't. -- Ed.] I'm still a bit over my ideal weight, but I've definitely lost a good amount since we moved here to SF, when I was 250 or so. I'm now currently hovering around 220 or so, so that's good. Cutting down on soda and snacking on much healthier things has also helped, as has our weekend walks around the neighborhood. I'm hoping to get down to the 2-teens sometime this year.


...and that's part of what's going on. Hopef all is well elsewhere with everyone else!