Mary Sisson's Blog, page 54

What's going on

Things have settled down on the tax & related activities front--of course stuff is still going to crop up, but it's not going to need nearly as much attention until, you know, next February. This weekend is going to be really busy, but I have my eye on next Tuesday as being a time when I can hopefully get a-writin' again....

P.S. I should add, that, yes, the confidence artists attempted to get one final "Fuck you!" in--easily neutralized at this point, but isn't it lovely to be remembered?

Marching into March

So, yeah, February was really a wash, word count-wise. But it wasn't entirely lost, because on my trip I re-read Trang and Trials, both of which I hadn't read in a good long time. That helped me reconstitute my old cheat sheet, but it also made me a little unsatisfied with Trials because at this point there's really only one plotline. I don't think it's going to reach the three-plotline glory of Trials, which is actually OK because it's a very different book, but re-reading the other books has gotten me thinking about what else in Trials needs to be developed. I've come up with some pretty good ideas, I think, so with any luck one of these days I'll actually have time to write them down. Imagine that!

Eeerrrgh

I'm looking at February on the calendar--ugh. I'll be out of town for part of it, then right back to meet with the tax accountant, which is going to require a LOT of homework (and is actually the reason for the trip). We managed to improve and simplify many things during 2015, but of course taxes are a reflection of the entire year . . . which . . . means . . . that . . . UGH!! . . . I may actually have to interact again with some of the lovely financial-service professionals we left behind last year. Or maybe they'll decide to actually do their jobs properly and won't require loads of angry prodding.

(Cue bitter laughter.)

Long story short--probably won't be getting a lot of writing done in the near future. Honestly, this is not what I'd rather be doing, but you know--the entire reason this all takes so much time is because it was neglected, and hopefully the work I put in now will mean considerably less work down the road. I feel like I keep telling myself that, but things have been easier these past few months (WAY easier than they were in early 2015, oh my God), so it is helping.

Tax time is just always kind of a bitch, though.

You know what I'm missing?

I cannot for the life of me find the cheat sheet I made up for the soldiers that lists all their jobs, when they came onto the station, etc. I made it first with Trang, but it really reached its glory with Trust because Patch had so many scheduling conundrums to deal with in order to keep his laser tag games going and still have a proper team to go to the Cyclopes planet. Now I can't find it anywhere--ah, the perils of a lengthy hiatus. I guess after I finish this draft I'll have to read Trang and Trust again, and take notes!

Tallying up

Obviously between the allergy shot and the monster Korean assignment, I haven't been able to write, but I decided to do a tally since I'm roughly at the halfway point of Trials, plot-wise. I'm at 37,500 words, which I think is about right given that a lot of the background and physical descriptions in this draft at this point are just notes to myself (e.g. "SNAKE BOY BACKGROUND" or "DESCRIBE HOSTS HERE").

Topsy-turvy

So, complete the opposite of expectations, I made progress Friday and none over the weekend. What happened is that my Korean teacher assigned us this big, end-of-quarter project--and then decided she wanted a draft of it ASAP. Writing an essay in Korean is a major undertaking for me, so it's a big time suck. It's a community-college class, so usually the workload's much more reasonable because it's expected that you already have a job and a life. But our group has gone further than others, so the teacher is having to cobble together a curriculum on the fly, and I think she misjudged exactly how much work this particular project would be.

Taking Korean is one of those things where I feel a bit like, Why am I doing this? I don't need to know Korean, and you know, this project is going to swamp me for a bit. On the other hand, it's a really interesting language (all languages are interesting of course, but Korean is very different from both English and Romance languages), and at this point I'm finally feeling like I'm getting slightly good at it (honestly, writing this essay is really helpful, if also a real pain). The other thing is, since I don't live in Seattle itself, it's hard to find Korean classes, and as I said, this particular group of students is really committed, so there's not the problem of not having enough students to make a class (which was a problem in the past--I actually started and then had to take a year off until this group came along). As a result, I'm not going to be able to just drop class for a quarter or two to focus on something else, and then pick up where I left off.

So, I labor on....

Progress report

The visit turned out to be the antihistamine-free sort, so I wrote 790 words! Whoot!

Lack-of-progress report

Yeah, my Other Duties have been rearing their ugly heads--I've actually gotten quite a bit done, just not on Trials.

Tomorrow I go to the allergist for a re-evaluation. Assuming it's anything like the initial evaluation I'll wind up high as a kite on antihistamines, so I'm guessing I'm not going to be getting a lot of work done. The weekend should probably be better. I want to get some progress done then because I'm planning on getting my next maintenance shot on Wednesday, which will probably leave me pretty wiped out on Thursday as well.

But! I actually finished the first part of Trials! Most of the work was done earlier, but honestly accomplishing any kind of milestone on this book seems like such a huge deal because it's been so long....

Progress report

I took Monday off becuase it was a holiday, but since it was a holiday all the things I couldn't do Monday because stuff was closed has to be done today, plus I have class. So, yeah, I don't think I'm going to be getting much done today--tomorrow!

Progress report

Today I REALLY felt like blowing off the writing, but then the time came where I was going to have to make a post here explaining that I went shopping instead, and that was just too embarrassing, so not only did I write 590 words, but I rearranged some of the material so that the chapters break better as well. Let's hear it for the Hawthorne Effect!