If you've got the inclination, I have got the crime

I'm trying this thing where I somewhat strictly compartmentalize my days - and therefore organize my time better, since I've got so much going on at the moment. To wit: morning (after dog-walking/etc.) goes to Chapelwood and/or writer business; break for lunch around 11:00 or noon; work on the Princess X edits until about 4:00, then spend an hour or two doing yardwork.

The yardwork thing is important. For one thing, it's good to get out of my office for a bit after concentrating on a computer screen all day; and for another, the weather is nice enough to keep it from being truly odious, so I might as well get it started now. Trust me, in another month our yard will be completely out of control if we don't - because that's half the fun of a 100+ year old house in the south ... the place goes feral in the blink of an eye. But if you can get ahead of it and do a little bit every day - you can save yourself a major horticultural marathon in the 3-digit heat later on.

Or so I learned last year. Ahem.

Anyway, today I pruned back some huge old butterfly bushes that had been damaged in our last ice/snow storm; pared the red quince back down to a sane size (that thing is a MONSTER that would eat that entire bed if I'd let it); cut and dug out a bunch of stuff that didn't survive the winter, including a rhododendron that made me sad (though another one pulled through, and is thriving); excavated the camellias, which survived not just the winter but Greyson stomping through them repeatedly; and performed some minor weeding.

Up next: I need to weed the ever-living hell out of the newer roses, prune back the old rose tree before it makes for the power lines again, clean the dead stuff out of the flower boxes at the front of the house, and tackle the hedges (hollies and front hedges, not the mighty Hedge Henge - which is still recovering nicely from its major pruning a couple of weeks ago). Once I get all that stuff done, THEN and only THEN am I allowed to go shopping for more plants to replace the dead things.

Right.
So. Until then.

Here's today's progress on my witchy art-deco horror novel about Lizzie Borden thirty years after her parents' deaths - now featuring ghosts and non-ghosts alike, anti-Catholic conspiracy nuts, supernatural political shenanigans, the mafia, and a Bonus! space-worshiping murder cult hiding behind the KKK:
Project: Chapelwood
Deadline: October 1, 2014
New words written: 1581 (not bad)
Present total word count: 51,361



Things accomplished in fiction: Finished one final back-fill segment, wherein we catch up to our axe-murderer and he figures out a thing or two about the new players in the weird situation.

Next up: The priest-killer's trial begins.

Things accomplished in real life: Neighborhood jaunt with dog; all the stuff mentioned above; two chapters of Princess X preliminary edits.

Other: I'm shooting for 2 chapters of preliminary edits per day on Princess X, to good results so far. The idea is to massage in all the secondary stuff now that I've managed some restructuring, then go back and compose the new scenes I need to cement (and build upon) that restructuring in the next pass. Finally, I'll give it one last go-over before handing it back to the editor as (what is to be hoped) a Damn Fine Draft Two. Can I get this done in two months, along with everything else? STAY TUNED.

Other, and then some: I know it looks like that's maybe not the most jam-packed of all possible schedules, but everyone's capacity for creative output is different ... and I know my limits. I can absolutely pull longer days if I have to - but not for very long, and then I tend to have a pretty bad crash and burn. It's like I've said before, I just have to pace myself. My output is better (and ultimately more copious) this way, and I am saner. For a relative value of such things, natch.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 84,754