If you're brave enough to fly

Yesterday was an incredibly good writing day for me, surpassing what I’d hoped to achieve.  Which translates as over 2,500 words and the discovery of the end of this draft of Ghosts.  I feel like I’ve found the shape of the story now, and have passed it onto my writing group to see what they think.  Hopefully at least one of them has time to look it over before the next meeting, which is tonight!

Does anyone else have the time and inclination to beta read for me this weekend?  This draft is just over 6k, and it’s dystopian science fiction.  I really want to get to work polishing it on Monday, so I’d need some feedback before then.

The rest of the day was spent mostly doing house stuff and chasing the kidlet.  I have started making some inroads into my Aurealis Award reading and managed to find my first truly awesome story.  This is why I love reading for awards – I read a lot of stuff that isn’t my personal cup of tea, but there are the incredible gems that I wouldn’t have necessarily read.

I did get a couple of bonus hours to myself (alone! in the house) because the husband took the kidlet out in the late afternoon.  My brain was, as always, fried by then, so I did a little reading and then just settled back and watched some Skins.

And now it’s the weekend!  We have a bit of running around to do today, including the excitement of me getting my hands and feet X-rayed to see if I’ve had any joint erosion from my arthritis.  Always fun.  And tomorrow is Father’s Day, which is going to be bittersweet.  Awesome that the hubby gets to get celebrated, but it’s the first Father’s Day for me without my father here.  Still, I’d rather that than he still be alive and suffering the way he was for the last few months of his life.  Cancer sucks, as I think many of you will agree.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Yesterday it was sunny and warm in Perth.  Today, it is grey and threatening rain.  The last of winter, I hope.  I crave sunlight.

A somewhat frustrating day yesterday, due to a certain kidlet who decided not to have a daytime nap.  I know he’s going to drop that nap eventually, but for now I count on that 1-2 hour space of quiet in the middle of the day.  It’s the best time for reading for me, and for resting myself if I need it.  But he slept through last night without a peep, so I can’t have everything, can I?

It’s kind of scary how close he is to turning two.  He’s finally starting to pick up more words now, which is awesome (even if his default for I want is a whinging sound).  Super cute is him picking up “Yay!”.

On the writing front yesterday, 1,200 words on the short story, Ghosts.  Which is now in second draft, and this draft isn’t really resembling the first much.  I really want to get a full draft finished before writer’s group this Saturday, but it’ll depend on concentration levels, energy and whether the kid decides to nap or not.

Not much reading done, but not for a lack of want.  Going somewhat slowly through The Dervish House while I balefully eye the books stacked up to be tackled next.  And there’s also the Aurealis reading that I need to keep on top of.

I need more hours in the day.  Or a body that doesn’t need sleep so much.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

1. Baking cookies and banana bread.

2. Getting ready for writing group tonight!

3. The kidlet getting a haircut and being really well behaved about it.  And suddenly looking much older with shorter hair.

4. Sunshine!  Spring is creeping in.

5. The husband having an awesome co-worker who brought me back some rocks from up north, including a heart-shaped rock for good luck:

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

For about the fifth or sixth day in a row, I’ve woken with a headache.

It’s a combination of the weather (rainy), not being able to get out and walk every day due to said weather, a weekend spent partly in theatre seats and having to skip a scheduled massage.  My liver is not going to appreciate another day of painkillers, but yanno, life just doesn’t stop because I woke up in pain.

(Random: my kid just picked up my old iPhone and declared “apple”.  Um.)

The weekend consisted of this: a sick kid, seeing the last Harry Potter film and going to see Wicked.

And yes, I know that none of those things mesh well with having a sick kid.  Thankfully, we have family who are always happy to look after said kid, even when sick, to give us a needed break.

The kidlet woke up on Saturday morning with hives, which became steadily worse as the day went on.  Poor little dude didn’t understand what was going on, and was cranky as all get out.  He had a rough night on Saturday night, but turned the corner and the hives started getting better on Sunday.  This morning, he still has some,but they’re much smaller.  He has a cough and he’s still generally swollen, and I think a doctor’s visit will be needed today (thankfully, I already had one booked for myself – dealing with trying to get a doctor on the weekend was a headache that he wasn’t quite sick enough for).  At this stage, I’m thinking it’s a virus and not an allergy, but we’ll see what the doctor has to say.

Harry Potter was an enjoyable film.  It’s not my favourite of the film franchise (that goes to Order of the Phoenix) and I think more could have been made of some of the character deaths, to be honest.  Overall, I was left totally loving Snape as a character.  And we could totally have done without the epilogue, but it does wrap up the whole story well.

Wicked was terribly awesome.  I kind of wanted to bring the whole stage home   My sister and I treated my mother to a ticket (going to see muscials when they’re in town – which is fairly rarely in Perth – is kind of our thing).  It was nice to go to a matinee and see lots of kids enjoying themselves, too.  The performer who played Elphaba in the production here was holy-crap-amazing.  Though I could have done without the whole theatre getting far too excited when Bert Newton stepped on stage *insert eye roll here*.  It’s a great show, and I encourage people to go and see it if they can.  And I brought home a plush winged monkey for the kidlet (who thankfully napped for the husband most of the time I was gone).

This week I really want to get stuck into the writing again.  Today is probably going to be a mostly-lost day due to the needed doctor’s appointment, but I’ll do what I can

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

I have been a somewhat absent blogger of late.  I’ve had a great many things I have meant to blog about, I have just been lacking the time.

Well, I have the same twenty-four hours a day that everyone gets, of course.  But winter has been hitting me physically fairly hard, and as a result I’ve been sleeping a lot.  I constantly envy people who only need a small amount of sleep at night.  All those extra hours…anyway, I’m probably never going to be one of those people, and it’s useless to wish otherwise.

I have been getting some decent writing in, to the point that I passed the 10k mark of this new version of Thought and Memory.  I’m feeling fairly happy about this version so far, and hope that I can speed up my writing pace somewhat and burn through this draft.  It doesn’t help that my brain is getting hijacked by a new project and demanding that I start outlining that as well.

And reading – this is where I need to blog.  I have a post half composed about The Female Man and I’ve been reading and loving Lois McMasters Bujold’s Cordelia’s Honour.  And I think I’m a convert to the series and am going to devour the rest of the books post haste.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Inspired by a couple of people who’ve posted their projects list, my current list of projects that I am/would like to be working on for the rest of this year:

Writing – Fiction

1. First draft of Thought and Memory (in progress, should give myself a deadline).

2. Second draft of Never, get this to beta readers.

3. Short story potentially for the new Fablecroft anthology Apocalypse Hope.

4. Secret project, collaboration with an awesome writer friend which may head towards self publication.

Writing – Other Projects

4. Her Words and Worlds – writeup for Kirstyn McDermott’s work, along with an interview and giveaway.

5. Her Words and Worlds – Angela Slatter – reading, writeup, interview and hopefully giveaway.

6. At least one other author for Her Words and Worlds, haven’t decided who yet.

7. At least one review a month for AsIF or written up on the blog.

Other projects

8. Regular offerings of one-card tarot draws.

9. Continue my Temple of the Twelve work.

10. OBOD Bardic Degree – I’d like to be at least halfway through by the end of the year.

11. Begin making jewellery again, at least for random shinies.

12. Read at least 100 books.

And there’s all that other pesky life stuff in there, like try to stay as healthy as possible, raise a happy kid and not go crazy myself

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Health, life, the universe and everything

My health seems to be settling into something approaching decent again.  Most days, my pain levels are manageable, I’m sleeping fairly well and actually have energy.  As always, I have to be careful to stay within my “energy envelope”, otherwise I risk a crash, but generally, it seems like my body has adjusted to the cooler weather.  Winter is never smooth sailing for me, but the transition between seasons is always worse.

Thought and Memory

Still in heavy research mode and slowly outlining.  I feel like I’m missing something that will give me an entry into the heart of the book right now.  I’m hating “wasting” time on research and reading, but I think it will make the actual writing much easier when I get to it.  And hopefully save me a draft of pantsing

Awesome book that I am reading right now, which is sparking all kinds of things in my mind: Fang, Fur and Bone: A Guide to Primal Animal Magic by Lupa. I’m lucky enough to “know” Lupa a little via the internet, and she is amazing, and every bit of her energy and passion comes through in this book.

Her Words and Worlds

I am currently poised and ready to begin the work of reading through Kirstyn McDermott’s work (which is hardly work, mind).  I may begin today, if not it will be next week.

At the moment, I plan on informally reviewing the work as I go (perhaps posting my impressions in batches) and writing up a summary of my thoughts at the end.  Once I am done, I will also be interviewing Kirstyn and hosting a giveaway for a signed copy of Madigan Mine, her debut novel.

And I have also decided who my second victim subject is going to be – the extremely talented Angela Slatter.  I am beginning the work of acquiring her back catalogue now.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn. Please comment there.

I need to get back into blogging regularly again.  I think some of the reason why I’ve been quiet here is that I haven’t been actively writing.  For me writing feed blogging, which feeds writing, and so on and so on.

I have been researching like crazy.  And have a stack of research to go.  Slowly working up an outline for Thought and Memory, building the foundation on which I’ll start writing.  I’m aching to start the actual writing, to be honest.  I actually sat down on Friday and decided to just start writing without an outline.  And got about two paragraphs before I was looking for my outline.  Has this pantser become an outline writer?

Apart from the research, I’ve just been exhausted.  Sleeping like crazy and still needing more sleep.  Which has cut into my reading time, also.  Which always frustrates me, and leads to a lack of writing.  My whole life is a series of word-fueled cycles, and when one falters, they all do.

Despite the lack of words and exhaustion, life is good.  As I sit here typing this (stealing time from when I should be doing housework), my husband is playing with my kid.  I can hear them in the other room, reading books (“A star is also a sun”, my husband corrects one of the kid’s books – adorable) and playing on a toy keyboard.

Even though the first year (plus a few months) of my kid’s life was really hard for me (chronic illness and postnatal depression + sleepless and high needs kid = UNFUN), it’s a joy seeing him now at eighteen months.  He’s cut all of the teeth he should have by now and he’s sleeping well.  He’s not the most advanced with speaking, but he gets what he needs to across well enough.  He’s such a calm little soul now, always curious and always learning.  He’s showing signs of being an early reader (like both of his parents) and loves books (WIN).  He also loves being outside, and is crazy obsessed with the moon, with planes and trucks and cars and motorbikes.  He is an amazing little kid, and I am grateful to have him in my life every day.

And there’s your mushy rambling done for the week.  Hopefully I can actually get some writing done this week, and talk about words here.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn. Please comment there.

Things are pretty much in a holding pattern at the moment.

I am seriously exhausted by the onset of winter and its accompanying arthritis flare, and as a result, haven’t been able to get a lot of actual work done.  I’m expending a decent amount of my spoons on maintaining my health as best as I can – which means eating (somewhat) well (need to be improved) and exercising every day.

I am neck deep in research for this rewrite of Thought and Memory – reading a lot about ravens, cats and cryptids.  Still slowly plotting things out and reworking the old draft.  Very little of which may actually survive into the next draft.  It’s fun, but I’m having the sinking feeling that I’m pretty much going to be writing a first draft instead of the fun editing.  Oh, well.

And Her Words and Worlds is coming together.  I’m currently waiting on a bunch of ordered books and anthologies, and will wait until I have everything assembled before I start reading all of Kirstyn McDermott’s work.  I have my next victim subject chosen and will begin assembling everything I need there very soon.  At the very least, I am going to end up with a kickarse library

Now, I should return to my research.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn. Please comment there.

My Free Will Astrology seems very appropriate right now:

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “If you wish to bake an apple pie from
scratch, you must first invent the universe,” said astronomer Carl Sagan
in his book *Cosmos.* In other words, the pie can’t exist until there’s a
star orbited by a habitable planet that has spawned intelligent creatures
and apples. A lot of preliminaries have to be in place. Keep that in mind,
Taurus, as you start out down the long and winding path toward
manifesting your own personal equivalent of the iconic apple pie. In a
sense, you will have to create an entire world to serve as the womb for
your brainchild. To aid you in your intricate quest, make sure to keep a
glowing vision of the prize always burning in the sacred temple of your
imagination.

 

Only a little writing yesterday, since I was slapped with extreme fatigue as a birthday present.  I did manage to get a decent amount of reading done, though, which is good.  And the kid had another marathon nap, which was even better.

Right now, I’m just sick of being tired.  I have all of this enthusiasm to get work done, but little of the actual energy I need to see said work through.  Even now, at 8am in the morning, I just want to lay down and go to sleep again.  Of course, right now it’s probably fueled by the fact that the kid was awake a lot last night.

I just want to do so much, and I want to have the damn energy to do it.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.