Loving my discards just to confuse me

I can neither claim to have taken the weekend "off" nor to have gotten much work done. But such is life.

No new writing on Chapelwood until today (and not much at that), but there was useful progress on the Princess X edits; and - because why the hell not? - the Maplecroft copyedits just landed in my lap.

I have until April 7 to turn those around, which shouldn't be a problem, I hope. I think I'll save them for this coming weekend, and just barrel through them in one long go. It'll be a slog, but it won't be quite so frenetic as trying to juggle three ongoing big projects on a daily basis. Or so logic would seem to dictate.

* * *

In yardwork news, I've now tackled the enormous holly hedgerow; performed some heavy thinning/pruning/etc. on the giant front hedges; weeded the side beds (including the row of knockout roses along the fence); weeded under the front hedges; and cleaned out the climbing hydrangea, reinforcing it for its continued trek up the corner of our house.

I'm awfully fond of that weird plant, and very proud of its progress. I didn't know what it was until my husband's aunt clued me in last year, because it just looked like a gnarled 2-foot shrubby-type thing that had (at some distant point in the past) eaten the stake to which it'd been tied. As it turned out, the poor thing had been planted and staked, and then completely forgotten about for years - during which time, it had collapsed upon itself.

Armed with new information, I began to disentangle that bad-boy...and found that once I'd pulled all the vines out of it, pruned off the dead stuff, and gently stretched out the main set of tendrils - in fact I had a 5-ft. tall flowering vine that very shortly clamped itself to the side of the house, and is now almost 6 feet tall. I'm very pleased with its progress, but because it was planted just a smidge too far from the house, I've been bolstering it with tomato stakes and providing lines of twine to help guide it on its path. Next year at this time, it ought to be firmly anchored enough that I can do away with all that.

Pardon me for being nerdy about it. When I realized what it was, and what it was going to become - given another few years of care and encouragement - I sort of fell in love with it. It is going to look awesome on this house when it's mature.

* * *

In pet news, all is likewise well. The other day we were reminded that Greyson is basically a mother hen in a 90-pound dog suit, when a mourning dove flew into our den window. He immediately ran to her, barked wildly to alert and summon me, and stood guard until I could get there - then whined anxiously for me to do something about it.

The little dove was only stunned. I picked her up and put her in a box, because Greyson's barking wasn't exactly calming her nerves - and besides, we have a crap-ton of cats in the neighborhood, most of whom are 100% comfortable wandering into our yard to see what the dog is barking about.

In a few minutes, she had gathered her wits again. I opened the box and she flew off. All's well that ends well, and I might actually have the world's sweetest dog. Just sayin'.

* * *

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: 1074 (oof.)
Present total word count: 52,435



Things accomplished in fiction: Got called to the witness stand, but didn't throw up or anything, which was cool.

Next up: More testimony, most of which does not go particularly well. I'd predict further, but it's been slow going as of late, so I'd better not.

Things accomplished in real life: Neighborhood jaunt with dog; some of what's mentioned above; quite a good chunk of work on the Princess X rewrites.

Other: Thus far, I estimate that I've removed about 2000 words from Princess X in the course of my edits, but I've added about 4000 - for a net win, yes. I still have quite a ways to go, and when all's said and done, I suspect this one is going to grow by another 4000-5000 words or more. Maybe? I don't know, we'll see. I'm pretty happy with the improvements so far; I actually feel like I'm fixing this thing.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 85,828