(no subject)

[dr_pretentious]

Last night, the words "persistent cat on keyboard" got stuck in my head, and I couldn't get to sleep for thinking about the two books that could carry that title. Persistent Cat on Keyboard: The Life and Times of Thelonious Monk was the first, and the second was a children's picture book about housepets who form a garage band. My insomnia latches onto the oddest things.

22,760 / 50,000 (45.5%)

New words: 637

Current deficit: not thinking about that tonight

Working conditions: Tried to do longhand shift alone, with too late a start, at local B&N. 3 longhand pages, then stuck, then looked at books to prompt brain. Not research, just looking at pictures, honest! Typed longhand stuff into laptop while watching entirety of The Return of the King with Dan, who had thorny debugging problems to get through on a deadline and required the film as opiate to get through project. Couldn't tear myself away from the combination of spouse and Tolkien. The persistent cat eschewed the keyboard.

Not, withal, a stellar writing day.

Tomorrow morning, I have another diagnostic thingy that absolutely, positively has to be done at 6am. How did the medical system fall into the hands of sadistic morning people, is what I want to know!

I'm hoping that, between a morning writing shift at Starbucks with Breva the Axe and the evening write-in with my fellow Nanowrimo cultists, I'll make up a good bit of my deficit.

All those hours of looking at Ukiyo-e prints, history of warfare timelines, and maps of archeological digs of structures that were probably observatories--it did help. Beltresa's conquest of Miaaro starts with a sort of proxy war, when Beltresa and Efa get deadlocked. I'm used to thinking of Efa as it is in the big manuscript, two centuries later than the plot I'm working with now in the prequel. Different dynasties, different pressures. Now I know better what the Efa are about in the 110th year of the Principality. Chapter 3 will get unstuck tomorrow.

Still pining for Clausewitz, though.

Comments

Re: Clausewitz and research

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

i'm always fond of wet and cold for grinding down armies. historically, generals mud and winter have commanded the most powerful forces on the battlefield.

but wrt those vs more direct battlefield uses of weather, there's the question of "magical logistics": how hard is it for the weathercallers to summon them up. physically, generating thunderstorms strong enuf to produce damaging hail takes way more power than merely pulling rain from clouds, but doing it magically might be entirely different.

i'm fond of big gouts of flame, but sadly, nobody in beltressa's got those. :)

Re: Clausewitz and research

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Nobody on our heroes' side of the ocean. Occasionally, I look at the very sketchy notes for the last volume of the series, in which Sondliet and company make an ineffective effort to pacify Lel after knocking the capital over with a big storm. The Lelese have subjugated lots of other nations on their home continent, and I have only the vaguest notions of what any of those people do. So maybe there will be big gouts of flame, after all. Just not any time soon.

Re: Clausewitz and research

[reynaud.livejournal.com]

Well, there's an even more important aspect of logistics to think of, especially with weather: making sure that hail only hits the OTHER guys, and not yours.

Having your artillery rain (no pun intended) on your own troops is a good way of getting them annoyed at you.