May 4th, 2005

I haven’t exactly been good to you, lately, have I ? Well, if makes you feel better neglected blog, abandoned readers, you are not alone. I’ve done no writing this week. None. Well, that’s not true. I scribble words on paper here and there, in defiance of my word enumerating accountant. It’s the first time in ages I’ve wanted to write stuff by hand. I’m not sure what that’s about, but I’m letting it go for now. My music collection is neglected too. All sorts of songs that iTunes says I’ve never played before, that I want to listen to and enjoy, but no time to do it. I want to make myself a couple of new mix cds, too. I never finished the Perdido Street Station entry I started, though I did finish the book. I was hoping to get it in before April was up, but I missed that. I meant to have written the thing about grief by now too, but that needs its own special emotional readiness, and I’m not always just there when I also have the time to blog. I’m still behind on email. I’m not reading as much as I’d like to. I still haven’t started Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and I really, really want to read that. The only thing I’m doing well in right now is critiquing. I joined an online critiquing group, which I’ll talk more about later, but my inner accountant is working overtime over there because there’s this ratio to keep and I feel I must not only meet it but exceed it, so I’m slaving away over other people’s words and I haven’t submitted a thing myself. I tell myself it’s useful, and it is, but maybe it’s also putting off. Who knows? When I finish a third short story I will send the first one out into the world. I mean that. Only I haven’t done it yet, because I have only the first of the three stories. I have a couple of good starts, paragraphs and openings that could turn into stories at some point, but that’s it. I do have an official idea list, though, so that’s something. There’s some quite good ideas in it, too. On the other hand, I’m stuck in YWGYSL, again. I think I might turn my (third) hand to full-time edits of Cualcotel for a couple of weeks, if my internal word count agonizer can deal with it (and I’m not sure that he can). I also sabotaged myself by, you know, giving out this URL a bunch and then not updating at all. Way to keep people’s interest! (and this directionless blather isn’t likely to help). I even had a dream I missed putting in. Something last week about my brother that I don’t remember now. I want to play Civ III for about a week and be completely lazy.

Firefox is irritating me by being especially crashy. I was a rev behind, so I upgraded, hoping to make it stop, but that has not helped. It’s especially bad when I’m in bookmarks or history. It doesn’t save my session when it crashes, which makes me a very unhappy sort of Anarkey, since I never have less than eight tabs open. I even rebooted my laptop, which had like, I don’t know, seven thousand days of uptime or something. No dice, it’s still crashy. I used to be able to keep Firefox open for a week, now I’m starting it three or more times a day. It’s enough to make one swear off this internet thing!

I want to put some stuff I’ve written up here. I mean the real stuff, the fiction, not this journal type stuff. Maybe some Tatiana stuff. I’ve been writing a few new things about her and her friends. I’m not sure how I want to present that, though. Should I make another section on the site for the writing stuff or should I just paste it into a regular entry? Do I really want that stuff out here for people to read? I didn’t mind it out there when it was on those storyboard BBS’s a decade ago so I’m not sure why I’m squeamish now. I think it has low promise for publication which is why I think it’s a good candidate for the web. I’ve also been ruminating over renaming Angel. I do that periodically. It doesn’t matter, you see, that he had his name first. Joss has made it impossible for him to keep his name. So, in a sort of perverse turnabout, I’m thinking about calling him Book. It’s just a nickname anyways, but I need something. No one calls him by his real name, that I know for sure. Book is not as right as Angel was, but it’s closer to what I want than Preacher, which was the previous contender.

Right. Focus.

Hmmm, so hard to focus when I don’t think I started this entry with a point.

Counting this one, there’s five unfinished, unposted drafts on ecto. I wonder if I’ll ever finish all those other ones.

I guess avoiding this type of entry is why people do those meme things, huh?

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