(no subject)

14,964 / 50,000 (29.9%)

New words: 2016

Current deficit: 3373

Working conditions: Typed up yesterday's longhand words to warm up, then kept going on laptop to make up time. Quality suffered for not having any longhand phase today. Did half of typing at Starbucks, half in my study. My study's a pit. I need a flame thrower, a snow shovel, and a wheelbarrow to clear the excess paper out of here so I can think.

Notable incidents: That kin curse is a huge problem. Though it's the first on-stage occurrence, it's one time too many, as far as the House elders are concerned. Utroneth's going to have to either foster Stisele out to Trebin of Ythrae, or put the girl down like a dog. Since she lives to be the hero, I guess Stisele's going to live at Ythrae Palace for a while. Well, that'll make the sealed-off, massacre-emptied corridors of Ythrae Palace 200 years later that much creepier and more tragic, for readers who will have met the place first through Stisele, who will find it bustling and cheerful at the end of chapter one. The ever-receding end of too-long chapter one. How is it that, even during Nanowrimo, while I'm 3K words behind schedule, I still manage to make something too long?

I'm coming to understand more why matociquala includes so much data in her progress reports. For instance, her line about Mammalian Assistance always seemed more idiosyncratic than informative. But now I get it. If I had more than one non-human mammal living with me, it would be useful information for figuring out optimal working conditions. As it is, anytime I'm working in the house, Sonia's either sitting on my lap or right next to my keyboard. Right now, she's staring fixedly at the screen as if it meant something to her.

There's a poetry magazine--one whose editors fancy themselves hard-edged, despite being, you know, poets--whose listing in The Poet's Market includes the line, "Don't send us anything you wrote with a cat in your lap." Well, that rules out just about every project I've ever finished.

In other news, I've taken to playing Kula Shaker's "Govinda" over and over on my car stereo anytime I have to face Route 18, and the whole universe appears to be better for it.