Blog Without A Name

And today ends the 19-day write-a-thon.

Of those 19 days, I took three days “off,” by which I mean I didn’t write down any words for Ghost Ship.  On July 27, I had 45,380 words in manuscript, today at the end of my brain I have 73,441, for a net gain of 28,061.  Only 21,342 were Brand New Words; the other 6,719 were words previously written, excised, and retrofitted into the new manuscript.  So, that averages 1,334 words, or a little over five pages, a day.

I’d feel a little better if those were finished words/pages, but this one’s going to need a lot of editing.

All that said, I have, I think, five more scenes to write; I know what they are and their basic shape, and! the day-job is still on the two-day-a-week schedule until August 30, so I still have nine more full days available to me before the perfessers realize that Admin actually is going to make them teach in the fall and all hell breaks loose.

It’s gonna be tight, but I think I can meet the extended deadline.

It’s also gonna be a little rough on the perfessers because Secretary Brain is a far different beast than Writer Brain, and I can’t afford to turn Writer Brain off right now.  Hopefully, all faculty will be enjoying their last weeks of freedom at the pool, or in the archives, or wherever it is that they’re happiest, and won’t be on the hall.

In other news — Does Starbucks really insist that you speak Starbucks Speak  in their cafes or risk not getting served and having the police called on you?  I don’t do Starbucks much, but I’m thinking it’s time to start calling a Small a Small.

And! A group of guy perfessers discover that leaving your devices behind and just living in the moment may be good for your brain.

I hope everyone has a pleasant evening.

Progress on Ghost Ship

73,441 words/100,000 OR 73.44% completed

“. . .Uncle Er Thom. . .who was, so my fostermother swore, the longest-tempered man in three sectors.”

“Ah.” She tipped her head.  “Which three sectors?”

“Do you know?  She never said.”

As previously advertised, we were up early and on the road to Skowhegan, about an hour’s drive from the present location of the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, in order to do the Annual Eye Examination Thing.

Why, you ask, do we travel to Skowhegan, home of the Big Wooden Indian, in order to have our eyes examined?

When we first moved to Maine, we lived in Skowhegan, where we found among other Wonders, Marvels, and Oddities, the best. eye doctor. ever.  We hired him immediately and never looked back, so to speak.  It’s going to be very difficult, if we ever do pull off a move to the southern, more populated part of the state, to let Gerry go.  Though, really, a three hour drive one way to see the. best. eye doctor. ever. probably wouldn’t be excessive.

After the exam, it was a stop at the Skowtown branch of Tim Horton’s to take on more caffeine then, to SRM Galactic Headquarters to pick up a package left for us at the office next door.

This turned out not to be something that we thought might be arriving, maybe, but a Laser Mouse, sent anonymously by a Fan of Hexapuma.

For the record, the Laser Mouse meets Hex’s approval, and if he wasn’t a cat, he would thank you most graciously, Nameless Fan of ‘Puma.

Package retrieved, it was the post office, then Pearle Vision to order in the new eyewear.  By this time it was rising one o’clock, so we stopped at Sam’s which is conveniently located directly behind the Pearle Vision Centre, for a so-called Italian dinner.

Eh, not so much.  Even the garlic bread was a disappointment.  How can you screw up garlic bread?

Lunch. . .dispensed with, we took off for the grocery, passing the Scene of an Accident, with lots of policepersons, and ambulances and firetrucks and police cars, more uniforms, municipal FD slickers and! a car.  On the lawn of a house, it’s hood on the lawn of the house, and the house, or perhaps the car, gently smoldering.  Here’s an account, with picture.

Passing the spectacle gently by, we arrived at the grocery, took on supplies and thence to home, where we snacked on Steve-made chocolate-chocolate pudding, and I came back to the office to write.

I have now written, and made notes for a scene that goes. . .somewhere, probably just a little upline, and day is now officially done.

Tomorrow, Hexapuma goes in early to see his good friend Dr. Slack, then I will come home and write for a while, before trying to remember what it is that I need to accomplish in order to arrive at the day-job on Wednesday in reasonably good order.

. . .

Man, that was a fast 19 days.

Progress on Ghost Ship:

72,078 words/100,000 OR 72.08% completed

Had some stuff to do today, so a short word day.  Tomorrow, first thing! to Skowhegan and the yearly eye exam.  I expect I’m going to come out of that with a prescription for new glasses, but!  We shall see.

Has anyone here used a Virtual Assistant, and if so, how has that worked out for you?  Me, I’m still trying to figure out how to outsource doing the dishes.  Or the bookkeeping.  Or, hey!  The filing.

Progress on Ghost Ship:

71,300 words/100,000 OR 71.3% complete

OR, if we take Steve’s estimate as More Realistic

71,300 words/125,000 OR 57.04% complete

. . .I’m not sure I can bear only being 57% done, after having written damn’ near 26,000 words in two weeks, so I think I’m just gonna run with the 100,000 word Mental Health Plan for the time being.

I did some much-needed filing during the morning hours, getting most of the “easy” filing decently into drawers. What remains are judgment calls and five inches of marked-up proofs for:  The Dragon Variation, Mouse and Dragon, and Carousel Tides.  I really don’t want any more file cabinets in this office.  Heck, I don’t want the file cabinets I have.

I hear that there are households in these United States where there are no file cabinets at all.  How can this be?

In addition to filing, Steve and I did a fair amount of brainstorming, with more to come, and I wrote a couple words.

I am now tired.

Actually, make that. . .very tired.

See you tomorrow.

Progress on Ghost Ship:

70,307 words/100,000 OR 70.31% complete

. . .Steve cruelly suggests that we’re looking at coming in closer to 125,000 words than 100,000.  He’s probably right, too.

*sigh*

Progress on Ghost Ship

68,149 words/100,000 OR 68.15% Complete

We have met the laundry and it is vast.  Less vast than it was, granted, but vast nonetheless.  We’ll have at it again tomorrow.

I’ve taken to writing on The Leewit standing by the bookshelf in my office that overlooks the side wilderness.  The bookshelf is just the right height for typing, as it happens, and I don’t tend to fall into InstaNap(tm) when I’m standing up.

Mozart was in for awhile, helping me write by stretching out on the windowsill between The Leewit and the Actual Window.  Then he decided to Be Adorable and play with the mouse, then he wanted to pwn the keyboard.  These attempted takeovers were thwarted, whereupon, he took over the desk chair, which was fine; I wasn’t using it anyway.

Oh, and before I forget — Ram Island Light is for sale.  There’s only one bid so far — for a mere $10,000.

Steve’s home, did I say that?

Progress on Ghost Ship:

66,571 words/100,000 OR 66.57% completed

Oh, hey!  How many people would come to a book launch party in Old Orchard Beach, Maine in October?  No promises; just trying to get a sense of the crowd.

. . .what it says.

He brought me an ARC of Carousel Tides.

It’s pretty.

Progress on Ghost Ship:

64,863/100,000 OR 64.86% complete

Google’s corporate motto for many years has been “Don’t Be Evil.”  And for a while, it/they seemed to be trying to live up to that high standard.

They fought for net neutrality, they fought for Access for All, they went head-to-head with the Big Blue Smurf.  Yay, Google.  My hero.

Then, Google decided that they had a Destiny.  And their Destiny included Preserving and Making Available Everything Ever Written that could still be scanned, regardless of who owned it.  Boo, Google.  No biscuit from this author.

Then, Google decided that, yanno?  Net neutrality?  Allowing everyone equal access to the internet?  So Last Century.  The wave of the future was — of course! — a Tier System, where Big Business, which after all is the future — see BP and the Big Hole in the Ocean Floor — would have access to the Very Best Butter Bandwidth, and the rest of us schmucks — who are after all schmucks and only use the internet to post cat pictures and flame each other — can get by with a lower grade of access.

Read all about it:  here, here, here

Working assets is having a conniption over here.  You can sign their petition to the FCC, if you’re so minded.

So — what should Google’s new motto be?

So, in early-ish to town, with a stop at the credit union, which is inside the city limits but no longer in town.  When Steve and I lived in Waterville, more years ago than  I probably want to stop and figure out at the moment, I could walk to:   the Morning Sentinel (where I was gloriously employed as a copy editor); the grocery store; the “department store” (Zayres, then Ames); the drugstore (CVS); the bank; the bookstore; the frame shop; the art supply store; the music store; the copy shop; another department store (locally owned; the name of which escapes me); a lingerie store; a head shop; a newstand; three beauty salons and a barber shop; another drugstore (LaVerdiere’s);  the video store; three jewelry stores; an insurance company; a bakery; a liquor store; the post office; the credit union; two banks; and several restaurants and bars.

I mean, people lamented that “main street was dyin'” but honestly, I had almost everything I needed on a daily basis within a six-block area.

Now, the credit union’s moved out to the edge of town, where you need to mount up your car to get; CVS likewise.  LaVerdiere’s closed, along with the grocery store and both department stores; the video store of course is long gone; Al Corey’s music store closed for remodeling a couple months ago, and now it’s and empty storefront.  Downtown still has stores in it — Children’s Book Cellar is still there; the bars and restaurants — renamed and revisioned, some of them — remain.  Liquor store’s still good.  So’s the post office.  But the lack of a grocery store (and though I Love Them, the fresh market is not a grocery store) has kind of made downtown untenable as far as living goes.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a good deal lately, as Steve and I try to figure out how to move “in town” by which we mean to a place where we can walk to most of life’s little necessities.  And where we won’t be ‘way, ‘way out in the country when we really shouldn’t be driving in snow anymore (I’m watching what some older couples — by which I mean, older than us — of our acquaintance are going through, trying to stay in country houses when one, or both, are becoming frail and it’s scaring me to death, here).

And!  All of that?  Was a digression.

Where was I?

Ah, yes, the bank, thence to the copy shop (which is still there, though much diminished from its days as Office Supply Empire and Quick Print) to make photocopies of the marked up pages before putting same in envelope and mailing them to North Carolina.

Having done this, I walked down to one of the two surviving beauty parlors to see if anything could be done about my hair, but they weren’t open at 9:15, though the hours on the door said “Monday 9-4.” I therefore went to the Post Office, mailed my packages, picked up the mail and returned, to find an undated-or-timed sticky-note on the door stating, “Be back in a few minutes.”

All righty, then.  I stuck around a few minutes, but no one ever showed up, so I walked down to the second salon and there Hilary cut my hair in a very satisfactory fashion and I can see again!

Having achieved this entirely satisfactory outcome, I got in the car and drove to Elm Plaza, there to dispatch an errand at Penney’s, walked down to the grocery store and did that errand, and so to home.

All of which took much longer than I had anticipated.

Came home, unpacked the groceries, made lunch and ate it, did a modest amount of laundry.

Writing happened, though not as much as I would have liked.  I realized rather late that part of what was throwing me off was that there was one (1) scene missing and one (1) scene  in the wrong place.  I remedied those situations and now am officially done for the evening, and yea, verily, the day.

G’night

Progress on Ghost Ship

64,035/100,00o OR 64.04% complete