Robin McKinley's Blog, page 209

The Therapeutic Value of Roses

 

 This is the good and the bad news:  I’m on page eight of the third draft of PEGASUS.  I’m on page five of the second draft.*

            I’d better not be planning on going on like this.  PEGASUS:  THE TETRALOGY. 

            Nor am I going to make it by the end of the summer . . . if I go on like this.

            I tell myself that often the beginning springs into new, expanded**, detailed, clarified form when I come round to it again from the end of the previous draft.***  Oh yes, I think.  Th

1 June

 

Yes, I’ve begun the third draft of PEGASUS.  Yes, I’m . . . hmm. . . . A trifle preoccupied about the passage of time.  I mean, the end of May shouldn’t have happened already.  It can’t possibly be June.*  And I’m sure I’ll be saying something similar about the end of August.

            Oh yes, and the first 800 words have changed, although not very much (well, so far.  I could always go back later).  But one of the reasons I stopped where I did last night is because I realised the next paragra

DONE

 

I did it!   I’m through the second draft of PEGASUS by the end of May . . . with an hour and five minutes to spare, as I write this.* 

            Pardon me while I make a fresh cup of peppermint tea and play a little Mozart to celebrate.

            I am also several stages past brain dead** so here’s the first 800 words of the second draft masquerading as a blog entry.  I promise nothing about whether or not these will be in any way related to the first 800 words of what I long for to be the fi

Guest Blog: A Meeting of the Mods

(Black Bear)

Memorial Day weekend is always a pleasure for me. I leave Indianapolis, land of a thousand racecars and a million tourists this time of year, and I go to Madison, Wisconsin instead for three days. I hit the Farmer’s Market, buy things I don’t need on State Street, and talk about books and issues of gender, politics, and sexuality at WisCon. WisCon is self-billed as the World’s Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention; I’ll take their word on it, as my experience of the World’s Les

PEGASUS watch

 

I GOT THROUGH ALMOST TWO PAGES OF THE FIRST DRAFT OF PEGASUS TODAY.  Which still leaves seven.  Sigh.  But I think I’m still just in with a chance to finish the second draft on Sunday:  the last scene is, I think, the last scene–it flaming well better be, not least for the pleasure I plan to derive from the last line, and the prospective shrieks of anguish and outrage I hope by it to produce*–and it’ll need rewriting because first draft usually** does, but I don’t think it’s going to engender s

Entitlement, III

 

At the end of ‘Entitlement continued’ I promised an Entitlement III to try and round up some more of the good comments the subject inspired.  That was a while ago.  I’m disorganised, absent-minded, and I have three days left before the end of the month to get through alchemicalling the last ten pages of the first draft of PEGASUS into the last x  pages of the second draft of PEGASUS.  Which would sound fine except that these are the same ten pages of the first draft I’ve been failing to get thr

Puppies

 

I spent half the morning up at Third House, discussing things with builders and painters in a cool, rational manner.  I WANT A FRELLING BLOODY BLUE THAT MATCHES THE FRELLING BLOODY BLUE IN THE TILES, OKAY?  AND WHERE’S THE NEW FRONT DOOR?  AND YOU SAY YOU INSTALLED THE RADIATOR–THE RIGHT RADIATOR–BUT SINCE I CAN’T SEE IT BEHIND THE 1,000,000,000 BOXES OF BACKLIST, WHICH IS WHERE THE BACKLIST SEEMS TO HAVE ENDED UP,* I WOULDN’T KNOW.  NOT KNOWING IS MAKING ME NERVOUS.

            Then I walked he

Guest Blog: The First Week - A Pictorial Pupdate

by B-Twin-1  (Who is getting a little more sleep now.  Maybe.)

Day 1 - Tired but happy

Day 2 - Puppy Pile

Day 3 - Learning to really "work the system"

Day 5 - Lined up at the bar

Day 6 - Still hanging around the bar!

Day 6 - Exhausted from holding the bar up

Day 7 - A week old! (And learning to approac

First Roses

 

            I overslept by an hour and a half.

            I feel like death on downers.

            I decided, since I felt like mouldy hay anyway and had no good mood nor PEGASUS-producing energy to ruin, I’d make a lot of overdue phone calls.  Like to the dentist.  I try to avoid the dentist* when the ME is on the ascendant, because you can be run over by a bulldozer too many times.  But this particular bout of ME has been going on for months and I can’t avoid the dentist forever.

            T

Famous (Not Blue) Raincoat

 

 I am in permanently divided mind about the weather.  Walking is much pleasanter when the footpaths aren’t hip deep–and hellhounds try to levitate over bad footing, with mixed results.  But watering your garden is a drag.  I hate watering.  Most boring job on earth.*  And annoying.  And my garden is a little . . . over-potted.  Pots always need watering.

            We’ve had this run of glorious bright sunny weather . . . but the ground underfoot is getting on for rock-like and I’m tired of wat