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!

So yeah. I'd completely forgotten I had Monday off until about ten minutes before logging off last night, when a coworker reminded me. D'OH! So that means I have an extra day in which to do stuff! And I've already decided that it was high time to bring in our car for a maintenance check-up. There's a Honda garage on 9th in the Sunset, which works out perfectly, as I plan on hanging out in the Haight for some shopping at Amoeba and elsewhere. Woo, day off!

Meanwhile, writing has been going really well! I'm not exactly hitting stupidly high word count, but there's a lot of forward motion going, which is good. Two Thousand is going well, as I've just started Chapter 4 a few days ago. I'm also playing around with a story idea with my daily 750 Words--it's in the Mendaihu Universe, but quite early in the history. As for Walk in Silence, I'm still working on that on the weekends. That one's slow going, but it's getting there.

Writing-related, I had a very slow work day the other day, so I had a bit of fun with Photoshop and a great picture of foggy Dubai that I found online, and created a mock-up cover for A Division of Souls. It's not the official cover, of course--it's out in the wild at this time--just a made-up one. The back cover copy is a bit clunky and I may fix it, but I like how it came out. Check it out at my Welcome to Bridgetown blog and let me know what you think! :)

I'm also keeping up with the Inktober meme on Tumblr, creating various doodles and whatnot. I had a five-day theme going in which I showed how I draw my imagined maps, which seems to have gone over quite well with the cartography-minded (it's been reblogged a few times too!). Murph has been popping up, as have some fun caricatures that are coming out a hell of a lot better than I expected. Perhaps my art skills aren't nearly as rusty as I expected...?

So let's see...not too many other plans this weekend. We have shopping to do as we are out of pretty much everything right now. We have the Blue Angels WOOOOOOOOSHing over our neighborhood as they do their show later today. We may have a visit to Japantown as well. It's very up in the air at the moment, but that's okay. Weekends are for relaxing. :)

Let's try this again, shall we?

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in Spare Oom and elsewhere. We've had a busy schedule of things going on, including a double-header last Saturday of A Prairie Home Companion and Beethoven and Mason Bates at the SF Symphony. Work featured a new scanning program that's supposed to make my work easier but has instead turned the entire week into a giant clusterfuck of biblical proportions (not affecting me directly, but seriously affecting the workflow so much that it's affected clients' workflows--yeah, it ain't pretty). On Thursday I was out most of the morning getting a work PC refresh (and high time for it). Suffice it to say, the last two weeks have been filled with all sorts of WTFness and letting things slide so as to retain some semblance of sanity.

That's not to say it hasn't been a complete wash, though!

--750 Words: I've let this slide on multiple days this past week due to the work issue or simple exhaustion, but I aim to pick right back up where I left off. My 750 have been meandering as of late, though, a lot of random babbling about things. Now that things have quieted down a bit (sort of), I'd like to return to the daily morning words as an ongoing exercise in attempting short story writing. I'd written two examples earlier of dialogue-only scenes and enjoyed it immensely, so I'd like to continue with that. I've always complained about being unable to write short stories, and I think this is a good way for me to change that.

--Journaling: I think doing this has definitely helped on a personal level...I'm forcing myself to channel any frustrations or personal thoughts into a notebook rather than on Twitter or here on LJ, and in effect it's given me an outlet where I don't have to worry about editing or censoring myself. Not that I'm known to curse a blue streak or think impure thoughts on a normal basis, mind you--more like I've given myself free rein to say whatever's on my mind without the worry of what others may think about it. And hey, no trolls! And in the process, I think it's cleared up a lot of my other writing...if I write in my journal early in the day, the inner frustrations and distracting thoughts are already purged, leaving me with a clean slate for other projects.

I've also been making sure I keep my desk calendar updated as well--I have one of those hardbound "engagement calendar" books that I picked up from Green Apple and have been making it a point to write down what I did that day creatively, however big or small. I'm doing this as another exercise, this time to gauge my creative output and see where I may need adjusting or if I'm doing better than expected. I haven't done this in ages, and it's actually kind of fun. I don't have any set goals for word count (other than the daily 750), so it's more like a creative diary for me.

--Revision: Almost done with the 2013/4 revision run for The Persistence of Memories! I may want to run through this novel one more time on my tablet after it's done, just to give it a once-over, but this revision run for the most part has been pretty smooth. A few changes and rewrites here and there, but for the most part a lot of it has been surface cleaning, mostly changes in grammar and phrasing. Two more chapters and I'm done with this pass! Then to start on the revision of The Process of Belief. That one's going to need a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to it.

--Submission: No word yet on the Angry Robot submission, but I did happen to hear back from the JABberwocky Literary Agency after sending something to them some months ago. It was a rejection, but hey--it was something!

--Blogs: Due to busy weekends and crazy weekdays, I'm a little behind on these, but I hope to get caught up again once everything calms down again. I'm about halfway through the next-to-last Blogging the Beatles post at Walk in Silence, and may write something new for Welcome to Bridgetown soon. I noticed that I don't have much daily traffic on those blogs, but I'm happy to say it does go up a bit when I do post, so that's a good sign.

--Music: Been making it a point to pick up one of my guitars and noodling around during slow moments. Or more to the point, creating slow moments in the day, and using said noodling as a way to unwind. Haven't written anything new other than a few riffs, but hey, it's something. Plus, it's keeping me calm, which is good. I have a habit of going straight out some days and exhausting myself in the process. Music has charms to soothe the savage breast, as Congreve says.


...and that's been the last two weeks!

Today's update? Had a nice long walk to Q and back, and will be heading down to the symphony again tonight to see another Mason Bates piece ("Liquid Interface") and a few Beethoven pieces. We may drive this time, as it's an 8pm show and I'm sure we'll both be too tired and irritable to wait for the buses at the end of the night. Saturday night in downtown San Francisco can get a bit silly. And WOO! Long weekend! Hoping to get a caught up with stuff that fell by the wayside, maybe post a few things, and maybe even relax a bit.