between the rock and the cold, cold sea

There's a fifth of a book on my harddrive.

You don't want to know how long I've been writing it, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

My records go back to January 2007, with a file (09-01-07 "early morning" is its actual name) containing four thousand words. But it's older than that.

This fifth of a book (it was a third of a book, once, for a brief, glorious time) has been rewritten from scratch at least twice. I abandoned it in despair, swore off it, vowed I'd never write another word - and broke all my promises.

I keep coming back to it.

In Thessaloniki, I hadn't written a word of fiction for months. I opened a file that had fifteen thousand words in it. By the end of the week in which I was sick, there were twenty thousand. And thus it has remained. Until tonight, when I - driven by some stubborn compulsion - opened the file to pick at it.

Now there are 20,200 words.

I guess I can't give it up.

Although I may have to revisit the metaphysics... But that's window-dressing for now.

I remember what I hate about typing in my bedroom in winter weather. The draft is cold and damp and makes the joint at the very bottom of my thumb hurt. And my knuckles.

Gods, the weather is freaking nasty, since Tuesday. And very little light on the horizon.

So, writing. It's... not easy - when is it ever? - but right now I'm avoiding bookhate by the skin of my thumbs. I've got too much distance between me and at least one of my protagonists: too much trouble getting into his skin and understanding how he thinks - how he ought to think.

I'm aware that the only way to get past this is to write to the end. And really, there are times when I'm able to get deeper under his skin, which makes me wonder if I'm putting this scene in for the right reasons.

Anway. We advance, by inches, towards 29K. What's that, nearly one-third of a book? One-third of a book. I swear, the more I write, the longer it gets.

It feels like a third of a book, anyway. So, you know. Here's hoping to get it done by this time next year.

Yeah, I'm really that slow.

An hour's work today has given me a respectable -- somewhat -- damnable presentation.

(Scholars tend to agree that Isaiah 11:6-9 is probably a Deuteronomistic addition to the text. I have stated this is several different ways, and made stuff up about kingship, Ahaz and Isaiah, in the case that it is an Isaianic original oracle.)

I have also written.


Progress, Tuesday 15 January, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

New words: 560
Total words: 6,020

Reasons for stopping: college
Darling du jour: Not today.

Tyop du jour: N/A
Words Word doesn't know: N/A
Mean things: uncomfortable witnesses, interfering politicians.


I'm not entirely sure the scene I wrote today justifies its existence in the narrative. But perhaps thirty or fifty or eighty thousand words down the line hindsight will surprise and reward me.

Or, you know, I'll take it out in the second draft.


I was thinking about my process today. I get maybe three hundred words down in an hour when I concentrate, less if I'm being fussy. That's not slow, though I'd like, you know, to be a faster (and better) writer. I don't usually have more than an hour to devote to writing, so those three hundred need to be the right words, or at least not the wrong ones. I can't say, It's a first draft: fix it later. Because I don't want to waste what little time I have.

I look forward to seeing how this works out when I finish this and go back to revise it.

---

Climbed. Sent one route -- the easiest one, of course -- and fell off two more. My upper arms do not like me right now.

But I wandered up to the outdoorsy shop up off Grafton St., and asked a very nice lad to set aside a harness, carabiner, and belay device for me, so I'll pick that up tomorrow. Then I won't have to pay for equipment rental anymore, and possibly I'll get to do some more climbing. (Twice or three times a week, maybe. If I can find someone to climb with regularly.)

Tomorrow, at least, I have no physical exercise -- beyond running for the train -- scheduled. So I need to do some printing, and get a good start on this next essay, and write up that review I owe the SR. And get the application form for Schols. And figure out a budget, and maybe have myself an evening of curled-up introvertedness. (But probably not, since I have quite a bit to get done.)

Expect to see less of me until March. Much less of me. (I'm typing this on the train, since by the time I get home, I'll have the energy to post this, eat, conduct the most necessary of necessary emailings, and then fall over. Thud. Like that.) There is so much in my life that is just not getting done lately.

(I should see how much more of my society responsibilities I can push off onto the rest of the committee. Because stress, it does not agree with me. And I refuse to repeat 2006. Ever. Again.)

Tired now.

I have a damnable presentation due Thursday. Isaiah 11:6-9, social and historical location thereof. Tomorrow, I have a date with the library in all its glory, and I'm not coming home until it's all-but-done.

Damnit.


Progress, Monday 14 January, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

New words: 730
Total words: 5, 460

Reasons for stopping: college work
Darling du jour: He swallowed, pride like thorns in his throat.

Tyop du jour: N/A
Words Word doesn't know: N/A
Mean things: noon, interfering politicians.

---

Gymmed this morning. Barely a twelve-minute mile, bah. On the other hand, not bad for someone who, in the end, achieved perhaps three complete hours of sleep last night.

Good things: government gave me monies (earlier than expected, woo!). Still not dead. Family worries slowly subsiding.

Undone things: plane tickets need alterations. Doctors' appointments, arranging thereof. Accomodation for Calgary. Reading stuff for people.

...Must get climbing kit with nice monies. That would save money in the long run.

Going to fall over now.

I was humming the first couple lines of Andrew Bird's "Measuring Cups" all day.

Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game,
Come to front of the class and we'll measure your brain;
We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name

Progress, Monday 7 January, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

New words: 350
Total words: 4,030

Reasons for stopping: college.
Darling du jour: Dusty afternoon sunlight shaded her copper-toned skin to speckled bronze, pooling in the hollows above her collarbone, bringing out the red threads in her earth-brown linen shirt.

I am trying to be mindful of specifics. Sometimes it works. In this case, I'm hopeful.

Tyop du jour: N/A
Mean things: complicated-not-exactly-unrequited love.

---

Today I gym'd, did Greek, achieved a drafty-lacking-a-concluding-paragraph 2.5K-word essay, and went to lectures. I can do an eleven-minute (just) mile in the morning, it appears, though I think I should talk to someone about exercises to strengthen my knees and ankles. I also totally forgot to re-register, so I'll have to remember that tomorrow.

Also tomorrow, the essay's concluding paragraph, and hopefully a draft of the next essay. And climbing. Not missing that for the world.

Then Wednesday, I can start the essay after that.

So far, so good.

---

Put your backpack on your shoulder, be the good little soldier
It's no different when you're older, we're all predisposed
That's all for questions now, case is closed.

Progress: Saturday, January 5, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

Words today: 680
Words total: 3,680

Reason for stopping: more than quota, sleep
Exercise: what do you mean, exercise?
Darling du jour: I aspire to adequacy, tonight.

Tyop du jour: entertamed
Words MS Word doesn't know: N/A
Research: seasonal vegetables - which, by the by, is entirely too fascinating a subject.
Mean things: unexpected messages

Books in progress: textbooks, Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel (English translation by Paul Cartledge), Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Tobias Bucknell, Crystal Rain.

The glamour: Today, I slept in, and stayed home, hermitlike in my isolation. I did nothing, except some writing. It was glorious.

Progress: Friday, January 4, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

Words today: 500
Words total: 3,000

Reason for stopping: more than quota
Exercise: short walk
Darling du jour:

Ramon could rule the death an accident or a suicide and go back to the shade of the watch-house now, if he wished, and no one who mattered would ever care otherwise.
But that's not justice, is it?
Instead, he touched cold cheeks with his fingertips, lifted the dead man's arm.

Not only does this guy think he's funny, he also thinks he's Good. He'll pay for not being nearly cynical enough.

Tyop du jour: N/A
Words MS Word doesn't know: lividity, taverner
Research: rigor mortis, lividity, the effect of insects on dead bodies
Mean things: still rotting corpse, high summer heat

Books in progress: textbooks, Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel (English translation by Paul Cartledge), Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Tobias Bucknell, Crystal Rain.

The glamour: More essay, more commuting. Cold weather.


...You know, this book has been unusually good to me since I started rewriting it. (This makes me worried.) I even know, now, why necromancy is absolutely verboten in the city. Ancestor cult!

(Trust me, it makes sense in my head.)

Progress: Thursday, January 3, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

Words today: 500
Words total: 2,500

Reason for stopping: more than quota, meatpuppet needs sleep.
Exercise: short walk
Darling du jour: "Dead bodies generally are [quiet], Vollier." Ramon pushed sweaty hair back from his forehead and gave the sergeant half a grin. "One of the few good things about them: they don't tend to start riots. Now, before the heat gets worse, shall we examine the corpse?"

This character thinks he's funny. He's going to pay for that later.

Tyop du jour: contsable for constable
Words MS Word doesn't know: whuffed, m'lord
Research: Mediterranean trees
Mean things: rotting corpse, high summer heat

Books in progress: textbooks, Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel (English translation by Paul Cartledge), Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Tobias Bucknell, Crystal Rain.

The glamour: Essay, commuting. And snow!

No, really. Snow!

Progress: Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The duellist of Alusind

Words today: 185
Words total: 1990

Exercise: push-ups, fighting commuters, walk.
Darling du jour: "As I can," she said, and swallowed the tangled knot of emotion -- old hurt and betrayal and care twisted up together -- in her throat. "My word on that."

Twenty minutes trying to imply conflicted emotion, and that's still the best I can do. Ah, well. We improve, however slowly.

Words MS Word doesn't know: N/A
Books in progress: textbooks, Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel (English translation by Paul Cartledge), Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Tobias Bucknell, Crystal Rain.

Crystal Rain may turn out to be one of those books that just don't do it for me. Possibly. I'm going to give it another fifty pages.

The glamour: More essay. Commuting.


Last year, when I was trying to write this book for the first time, I made it to 20K before I had to rip it back to take a look at where I'd gone wrong. The second time, I made it to 12K.

This time, it appears that the lightning bolt of enlightenment has struck at the end of the very first scene, before I've gone very wrong at all. Instead of swashbuckling feats of derring-do involving cross-dressing noblewomen and a quest-shaped plot, it appears that what this book needs to have by way of structure...

...are some of the trappings of the police procedural.

So I need to dust off my questionable Watch Inspector and see that he occupies himself with tension! and stakes! and plot! - which, incidentally, will require me to figure out some more about the political situation - while my necromancer-duellist and her intelligencer housemate go about getting themselves neck-deep in bad trouble.

This still leaves me with a trouble-shaped hole in my plot...

(I will go away and think some more.)

Spending two hours in the gym may be contradindicated: I'm all limp and floppy and immobile now. But I have my half-mile in five, and working towards my mile in twelve, and the weights were easier to lift today than last week.

But still, floppy.

#

I won't dignify Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by pretending it actually deserves the term history. First published in 1724, it's a collection of lives - remarkably similar in form if not in content, now that I think about it, to the classical biographies of Plutarch or Suetonius - recounting origins, exploits, and in some cases trials of some of the most notorious pirates of his day. The trial documents may be authentic, and he certainly captures the flavour and the spirit of the times, but whether the majority of his anecdotes are factually accurate in their specifics, particularly as they refer to the early lives of the pirates concerned, I would hold myself in doubt.

Which reminds me: I should really add another pirate/seafaring history to the list: Marc van der Mieroop's History of the Ancient Near East won't last out the month, and I really don't want to go back to classical history just yet.

#

A little over 1K words written last night, bringing the total progress on The duellist of Alusind in the last six months to a rather anaemic 12K. Although considering I had college and exam shit in there, too, not to mention the fortnight I, er, rather lost after coming back from the (Amazing! Exhausting!) Poland trip...

...Probably not appallingly bad progress, after all.

#

Stargate SG-1 annoys me. I've watched through to nearly the end of season 4, and while it's diverting light entertainment (emphasis on the light), it really, truly annoys me. Seasons 1 and 2 were rather hit and miss, warming up in Season 2, which had rather fewer truly appalling episodes than Season 1 ('Emancipation' was truly cringeworthy. 'The Nox' bored, and as for 'Politics'? Surely they could have found some other way to extend their budget and/or recap the season, is all I'm saying.)

Season 3 was more hit than miss, with a fairly solid overall arc and several really decent episodes - the two-parter 'Jolinar's Memories'/'The Devil You Know', 'Seth', 'Demons', 'Foothold', 'Shades of Grey' and the finale.

But Season 4? Has gone back, it seems, to prefering the stand-alone episode with minimal connection to an overall arc. And while 4.13, 4.14 and 4.15 are quite decent episodes, the vast majority of S4's episodes are no better than mediocre pieces of storytelling and cinematography.

I like extended season arcs, damnit.

At this point I'm watching for the explosions and, hopeful, for a smattering of the subtlety of character development I thought I detected in S3.

Season 5 does better boom?

#

And now, the TMI:

As of my last blood test, I've been informed that my 'bad' cholesterol levels (LDL) are elevated above what is to be desired in persons of my age and activity. I note this is probably to be expected, given my other problem, but it gives me one more thing to worry about, and I do most fervently desire to have fewer things to worry about.

Hateful.