And That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is What We Call a Draft

A very long and bloated draft, but a fucking draft nonetheless.

I think I may actually be missing half an Inaya chapter somewhere, but I'm too tired to look. I'll save that for the rewrite.

And now I get to turn off The Noose, which has been on repeat for the last 40 minutes.

P.S. I am so having a beer right now.

Nasheenian in Training

But how's her aim?

Lunch Break

I'm not sure how I'm going to finish this, but I'm going to finish it, dammit.

The Bitch is Back in Town

And that, my friends, is what happens when Nyx finally shows back up.

Damn, that was rough going for awhile.

I'm thinking it may end up running a tad long. Will print out what I've got tomorrow, but I think I'm through the worst of it.

Problem

The problem is, the book stops when Nyx is out of commission. These people can't slap their asses with both hands without her. Or, rather, there doesn't appear to be any narrative without her.

Once I push past this part, it's smooth sailing (which is why I skipped ahead and wrote those parts already), but this whole Nyx being out of the picture thing just fucks up the whole book.

I'm going to need to do a lot of revision once I have a draft. But I guess that was expected. Still.

I fucking hate this book, haven't I mentioned that enough times yet?

Got another 300 words. I need at least a thousand before I'm allowed to sleep tonight. That leaves me tomorrow to print it out and pull the last of it together.

I'm going to need more pancakes for this in the morning, seriously.

When this fucking book is done I will have seriously earned that month of WoW reward.

Blah blah blah emote emote emote

This book doesn't have enough fight scenes.

Parasite Induces Host to Suicide

Ways our behavior is altered by parasites, starting with the humble grasshopper.

Guns of All Sorts

Guns, quirky.

An Open Letter to Baristas Everywhere

When I say I'd like sugarfree syrup, it's not because I'm being an annoying hippie. Please do not give me regular instead and tell me it's sugarfree.

The next time I test my sugar and it comes up, inexplicably, over 200, it's you I will thank, vociferously.

Thank you.

Molasses

That was a bloody hard-fought thousand words, man.

The problem with getting to the end of this book is, I've already written all of the big fun scenes, and now my entire word count consists of all the boring but necessary transition scenes and touchups where I'm stringing them all together.

It's like swimming through amber.

More words will be written shortly. Time for a pancakes-for-dinner break.

Sunday Swimming

10 minutes of swimming sounds really easy when you see it on your training schedule, especially when you've done 20 min jogging followed by 20 min biking twice the week before.

But whoa boy, seriously.

I haven't done more than the 5 min of lap swimming I did last week since... since... I was about 11 years old and still doing swimming lessons. Biking I do everyday, and I'm not a total stranger to jogging. But lap swimming? Damn.

I subtracted 2 units of insulin from my morning pancakes dose, which I though might be overkill because, hey, 2 units is what I kick off when I'm doing 40 minutes of cardio. But better safe than sorry, right?

I forgot that swimming is a full body exercise, and there's a reason that Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day.

After clawing through the last of my laps, I came home and tested my sugar, expecting that I would have to do a correction.

Oh, no.

I was a perfect 95.

After only 10 minutes of swimming.

When I get up to 20 minutes I'll be subtracting *4* units of insulin from breakfast in order to get through it. That's pretty awesome.

I love that I can judge energy output entirely based on how much or how little insulin I have to shoot myself up with.... heh heh. My life measured in units of insulin.

So: swimming was embarrassingly tough this morning, but I got there, I did it, and the ear plugs made a big difference. As did the moment when my old swimming instructor's voice came back to me, "Kick kick kick!" and I realized I wasn't kicking enough. Things went much more smoothly and quickly after that.

I also need to figure out how to rotate instead of just plowing through while horizontal, which is one of the reasons why it's so fatiguing right now. I'm wasting a lot of movement and losing my balance.

It's been a long time since I've done this, seriously.

Stuff I Fucking Hate

I cut a bunch yesterday, so this is about another 2k.

I fucking hate this book. Must mean it's almost fucking done.

Weekend Training

Working out on weekends is new to me. At least, I haven't done it since Alaska, when I had a lot of time and very long summer days.

According to the training schedule, Mondays and Fridays are my off days, so today was 20 minutes on the bike and 20 minutes jogging. It's easy enough now that I'll be upping my jogging speed, which is cool. It's fun to be stronger than you thought you were.

Tomorrow is swimming. Let's get in the full 10 minutes this time, OK? For serious. I'll also be bringing my ear plugs (the ones I use for when I go shooting, funny enough). I've always had trouble with my ears, and just one swimming session was enough to remind me of them. I spent two days shaking water out of my head.

So. Onward.

Snip snip

Cut about six pages of crap that wasn't working, which pissed me off.

Then dithered around writing bits and pieces of personal emails and rants. Those, at least, did not piss me off.

Where's my whiskey?

Things I Need Tonight

Loud music and whiskey.

I don't have any whiskey around, but oh yeah, we've got the loud music in spades.

And I think I have two beers in the fridge.

Burn Notice

This is a smart, funny little show that does a lot of things I want to accomplish with Nyx and co.

You've got the gun-toting former IRA member ex-girlfriend, the alcoholic FBI-informing best friend (played by Bruce Campbell. Seriously!), the chain smoking hypochondriac mother who's really bad at being a mom, and the ex-spy who's gotten a "burn notice" i.e. been kicked out of spy business by a mysertious 3rd party.

There's the overarching story - the spy wants to find out who kicked him out and get back in - and then there's the story in each episode where our spy does good works and solves little mysteries, runs local jobs, blowing up cars and saving key witnesses and little old ladies and etc. for cash (all of his accounts have been frozen).

So you get to watch him and his quirky team - who have their own history together - work stuff out and screw up jobs on occasion ("Here's what happens when you attach the bugging device to the gas tank instead of the electrical system"), and best of all, the ex-spy is incredibly good at what he does, but woefully bad at relationships. Not just with his on again/off again love interest, no, but with, well, everyone. He just doesn't get it. The scenes where he's trying so hard to say the right thing during an emotional situation just make me laugh. He's far more comfortable blowing shit up.

It's also set in Miami, and hey, sun, sand, and surf are pretty nice. Thus far, there's been no "new chick he could possibly be romantically involved with" per episode, the way you see even in stuff like The Dresden Files series. Which wasn't done so badly there - there was more a possibility than an actual inevitability that every chick in every episode would be a damsel in distress he'd get it on with - but it's a noticeable difference here in the first three episodes that I do like (this could change, but I enjoy it so far).

I like that he's got no money, he likes guns and hitting things, he's terribly short on friends, and he's really bad at connecting with people.

Basically, I like that he reminds me of a way cooler version of me.

Now, give me a chick hero like this, folks. Cause though Fiona is a pretty awesome character, the actress who plays her looks hungry and terribly breakable most of the time. I keep thinking she's going to trip over her feet and snap her spine or something.

But: her character doesn't suck. Nor does the mom. And if you look at the "main players" ratio, it's an even split between male and female main characters. You've got Campbell and the spy, and Fiona and the mom in primary, recurring roles. And mom and Fiona are powerhouse characters who take active, strategic roles in every episode. They aren't one-off or passive, and they get and give just as much as the guys.

Now, tell me how often that happens?

(and then: make a show like this with a chick lead! Until then, I'll be waiting around for Sarah Conner to show up again)

Well, you know...

... if McCain dies in office, things might get interesting. Less interesting than if Obama dies in office (hey, she's Alaskan! When is *she* running for president? Crappy about the pro-life thing, tho). And is this really only the second time in 20 years that somebody's run with a woman VP?

Indeed it is.

But at the end of the day, we're voting for the prez... and not for the VP. Crappy chickens.

Note: I can also tell you honestly that this is the first time in eight years where I haven't been like, "If so and so is elected, it will be like electing SATAN!!!" Either way it falls, I'm feeling pretty positive.

Here We Go

I actually wrote the last scene of the book tonight, which was weird. It's so strange to write a book so completely out of order. I did the same with GW, but not to this extent. It's funny to be so close that you can taste it, but you still have to write about 5k of transition stuff to get you from one big scene to the next.

So close you can fucking taste it, but so much fucking work still to go. Frustrating as hell.

I'm taking a four-day weekend to finish the book. I'm off tomorrow through Monday. This fucker needs to end.



I cut 1K of what I had last time, so this is actually slightly more progress than it appears.

Tra-la. Early morning tomorrow.

Training

Did 20 minutes of jogging followed by 20 minutes on the bike. I skipped the bike yesterday because my weight training session at work was brutal. Not physically brutal, oddly enough, but mentally brutal. That whole almost crying because I had to do three sets of pushup rows and squat jumps thing was pretty demoralizing. I just couldn't stomach getting back into the gym after that.

But today ended up going really well. The jogging is already getting easier, and this is just my third session. It's fun to feel myself getting stronger, getting back into that old Chicago jogging mindset. It's funny to remember that I used to do 3 (and, when I was feeling cranky, 4) miles back then, before I got sick.

I keep trying not to look ahead at the schedule. At the end of week 11 I should top out at 30 minutes swimming (right now I'm thinking: 30 minutes of laps holy jesus), 45 mnutes of running (HAAH AHAH AHAHahah ahaaha ahah um ha umm hrm), and 55 minutes on the bike (now *that* I can do, seeing's as a bike is my primary mode of transit, and I was commuting an hour and a half to work on a bike [3 hrs a day total] in Chicago for several weeks there at the end).

And now, you know, looking at what I just wrote, it's funny. I forgot about the jogging 3 miles thing. I forgot about the 14 mile roundtrip bike commutes.

You know what?

I still have it in my head that I'm a totally doughy, unfit geek. Isn't that funny? I just had this thing in my head that was like, "Well, you're a doughy person, so this is going to be HARD." But then I remembered biking to work in 25 degree weather with crashing lake water splashing up at me and a brutal headwind and not being able to feel my fingers while I biked merrily home, and I'm remembering... dude. I can do this stuff. *Sticking* with it will be the challenge. But the actual, physical ability to do it?

Shit, I *have* that. I just need to fucking *do* it.

Like I said: just trying not to look too far ahead. It's the vertigo that's the killer, not the fall. It's the fear of failing that keeps you down, not the physical doing.

I just keep telling myself that.

Lost Highway

Continuing my Twin Peaks-inspired Lynch kick, I watched Lost Highway last night.

This is a Lynch I'm a much more comfortable with. The obscure cyclical story. Messages to yourself from the future. Dopplegangers. Body jumping. Choppy, nonsensical narratives. Creepy fellows. And, also, whores who get slaughtered. Ho-hum (I'm thinking that one of the reasons I liked Mulholland Drive is that it's a Lynch movie that actually passed the Bechdel test. Thus far, I have not found any others that do. Maybe Inland Empire? I'm thinking Dern talks to the gypsy about something other than a guy. Maybe). Though at least this one wasn't a damsel in distress.

I think what I like about these whacked-out jump narrative dream-logic movies is that they force my brain to try and make connections between things that just aren't connected. Our web designer tells me this movie was apparently Lynch's way of sorting out the whole OJ trial fiasco, looking into how a guy can live with himself after committing an atrocious murder.

I admit I was struck dumb at that event as the catalyst for this movie. The only connection I see is... guy kills his wife and is set free... um, but he's set free because he literally transforms into somebody else. And then goes and has an affair with his supposedly dead wife, who is now somebody else's wife, only not really.

Um.

It's a Lynch movie, all right?

In any case: dream logic. It's why I like these. It's a crazy brain exercise, which is likely good for my plotting muscles.

This one is a typical Lynchian brain-exercise.