It’s a white Christmas here in Ireland, and I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. And Ted got me my very favorite Disney movie ever, so that makes me happy too. All is well in Kit World. *beams*

Merry Christmas, everyone! *beams more*

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Over on Magical Words, the group writing blog I’m a part of, we’re running a book give-away contest this week. Head on over to participate in my contest–for which the prize is a signed copy of one of my books, or a copy of “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”, the Old Races novella I wrote this summer which has only been available to subscribers. While the novella will be available again to buy in February, this is your one and only chance to possibly win it for free. (And I’ll also send the winner one of the Ireland 2010 calendars that I did, if you take the “Hot Time” option.)

The contest ends Wednesday, December 30th, and the winner will be announced New Year’s Eve.

Merry Christmas Eve, everybody!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

We have accomplished two weeks’ worth of going to the gym now. It was less difficult to get up at 7am this week, possibly because I was going to bed at Very Sensible Hours, but also possibly because I was slightly more used to it. But although for the rest of the year when the gym is open, it’s not open until noon, I still should really get up at 7 and go write until half eleven and then go to the gym to…weightlift, probably, because I suspect the pool will, for its opening hours, be full of screaming children. Actually, that’s fine. It’s the locker room being full of screaming children I’m less keen on. That, and the bitterness of having to share lanes with several other swimmers who are really bad at lane-sharing, since possibly everybody will be trying to get their laps in during the limited opening hours. (Not looking forward to January and the New Year’s Resolution group.)

On the plus side, though, we did learn that our regular cabbie starts work at 7am, so when gym hours go back to normal we’ll just have him get us. That’s nice, then. :)

Today was a busy day, although I didn’t get all that much writing done. Swam, went to the store, made coconut joys, wrote a little, made dinner, watched NCIS, made marshmallow creme in preparation for making fudge tomorrow…heck fire, no wonder I’m sleepy. Off to bed with me!

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 16.4
ytd km swum: 50.5
ytd wordcount: 272,700

(x-posted from the essential kit)

An LJ reader emailed me a writing question a few days ago, and gave me the all-clear to use its answer as a blog post, so I’m going to give it a shot. The question (and its surrounding commentary, which I thought was relevant) follows:

I know that some authors find rewriting easier (in some ways) than the initial creative process. Me, I can whip something out of nothing without breaking a sweat. But whenever I try to approach the highly necessary rewrite of my recent novella, I get almost immediately overwhelmed by the minutiae of things that need tending to. I am pulled this way and that, trying to keep track of the myriad of details that need to hover simultaneously in my forebrain–and I end up just fiddling with the niggling little grammar nits, polishing word choice, questioning whether that adverb is really necessary, and reassuring myself that all the independent clauses are safely sequestered within their parenthetical commas.

Consequently, the real work–that is, deleting scenes and rewriting the whole cloth of large sections–goes undone because of these distractions of questionable value. Sometimes, I think I might be better off deleting the damned thing and starting over from scratch.

So, my question: In your subsequent drafts, how do you keep the story from getting in the way of your rewriting?

( Answer behind the cut. )

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Today's flights were thoroughly uneventful, and I'm now home. The kitties have been foozled and I've hugged the stuffing out of Andy... several times. No grades yet; I'm wondering if they'll just wait until the 28th regardless of whether professors turn them in earlier.

Andy and I went out to dinner tonight to a local Italian place. I had spaghetti, but I asked them to use their pizza sauce instead, and also asked them to add mozzarella cheese on top. It was very yummy. Afterward we went to Whole Foods and stocked up on cookie-making supplies. Tomorrow I plan on wrapping Andy's presents. I'm not sure when we'll bake the cookies, but we've committed to doing so.

Andy's parents will be visiting in mid-January. I hope they're not too disappointed in my grades, whatever they end up being. Andy's average was something like 3.7 -- given how badly I crashed and burned sixteen years ago, I'll be lucky if my overall average even reaches 3.0. I'm not even sure if it's possible to do so with two 4.0 semesters right now.

I'm home until late January -- I really need to set up plane tickets. Due to the way I set up my initial trip, today's flights were the return on a round trip flight. January's will be the outbound of an RT, and spring break will be the return. Then returning from spring break will be outbound and my return will be after graduation.

Oh well. my body still thinks I'm in eastern time, so I'm going to go to sleep. I'll probably get re-accustomed to mountain just about in time to return to Oswego.

I do not like the alarm going off at 7am (although this morning I woke up at 6:49), but I do very much like being up in the morning and getting exercise. Dang nab it. :)

I got 1400 words before lunch and was very pleased with myself. Then I came back from lunch, sat down to start the next scene, and realized I had no idea what to do with it. A look at the synopsis suggested I’d completely screwed up the scene I’d written before lunch, so I had to throw out half of what I’d written and do it all over. *sigh* So I wrote about 3K today, only 2K of which counted. Argh. (On the other hand, at least I noticed after about six pages, instead of sixty, which would have been much, *much* worse.)

I keep thinking I have things to blog about, and then forgetting whatever the topic was when I sit down to actually blog. Actually now that I think about it, that happens a lot when I’m writing a book, doesn’t it?

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 13.4
ytd km swum: 49.5
ytd wordcount: 272,000

(x-posted from the essential kit)

thinks to do:

- go to the butcher for a roast beast
- get stuff to make marshmallow creme (eggs, corn syrup…)
- write one trillion words (or at least 2500)
- maybe bake something nice
- try to remember the other things I’m forgetting, which are myriad
- like wrapping some presents
- and putting the ones we’re not wrapping under the tree
- and probably other stuff

!!! Holy crap! I finished my entire outward-bound journey on the Eowyn Challenge/Walk to Rivendell! That’s 4757 miles! Granted, I’ve been doing that walk since March of 2003, but I’d originally anticipated it would take me until 2011 to finish it (let’s hear it for living in Ireland without a car!). Wow! Hoo hoo, I’m all excited! How cool!

Now to walk back again. :) The road home is only 1625 miles (the road out splits several times as the party breaks up and they all take different paths), and then there’s the journey to Grey Havens, but sheesh, I might be done with the whole Lord of the Rings walk by the end of 2011! What’ll I do /then/? (Bilbo’s journey from THE HOBBIT, probably, but after that I’m going to have to leave Middle Earth and find somewhere else to walk…)

Woo hoo, go me! *does a little dance*!

miles to Minas Tirith: 120
The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 6.1
ytd km swum: 48.5
ytd wordcount: 267,000

(x-posted from the essential kit)

This was finals week, so there will be no more "Week N" updates until Spring. I finished with finals on Thursday, no grades yet. The professors have to have them in by December 28th. I had three finals and a paper to hand in. Actually, two papers -- he gave me a suggestion for the seven-pager and I went with it.

I've spent the past few days and will be spending tomorrow with Pamela and Christian. I leave for ABQ at oh-my-god-it's-early in the morning on Tuesday. That's about all for now. Happy holidays, whichever you celebrate at this time of year.

birthday party pictures & longford snow day & ted’s new derby behind the cut :)

( Read the rest of this entry » )(x-posted from the essential kit)

Ted and I had actually a very nice couple days in Dublin. Despite my initial impulse to leap out of bed and take the 8:15 train in and get to Ikea the moment it opened, wiser minds prevailed and we went in at 10:15, had lunch, and then … well, actually, then we had a complete and total failure to communicate with the bus driver about getting to Ikea, so we ended up taking the *entirety* of the bus route. Furthermore, it happened that we’d selected the route that went through Ballymon, which is a slum that they ran out of money for gentrification before getting to it, so it was quite the ride.

Ikea, which I frankly dread, was quite soothing after over an hour on the bus. :) Actually, it wasn’t bad at all, probably because 1. we had shopped online first and already had the list of things we needed and where to pick them up, 2. we managed to skip 90% of the rat maze (that’s why I really hate Ikea: it’s hard to get through it without going through every. goddamned. showroom…and I don’t like shopping to begin with), and 3. there were not 8,000 people there like there were in the Berkeley Ikea, which is the only other one I’ve ever been to. Anyway, we got our loot (a couple of new bookcases) and only spent slightly more than intended (because we decided little door things for a couple squares in one of the bookcases were irresistable) and arranged for home delivery, which costs too much and made us feel like we should go back in and buy some more things until we reached the 300 kilo limit for the price of that delivery. But we didn’t. :) And we said we lived in Longford, and yer man at the delivery counter looked alarmed and said, “Do ye’s need it before Christmas?” and we said no, which made him look slightly less alarmed. And then somewhat hopefully, he said, “Do ye’s need it before New Year’s?” and we said no, and I said, “We need it before April 15th,” and he looked affronted and said, “It’s no more than two weeks and we’ll ring ye’s the day before to say we’re comin’!” :)

The bus ride back, which was on another route, was far less time consuming than the one in, and we got back to Dublin in time to go see a reasonably early showing of Avatar. Of course, because we opted for an earlier showing instead of dinner, we had ice cream sundaes and popcorn for dinner, but oh well. :) And I liked Avatar quite a lot more than I expected to, although watching it in 3D made my eyes very, very tired. (This is only partly because it’s 165 minutes long. Coraline, at 88 minutes, also made my eyes very tired. I think it’s just the 3D.) We’re going to go see it again this afternoon in 2D, because we both sort of feel like we didn’t see it as clearly as we could’ve, and I have no real sense of how good the animation was because the 3D altered the experience. It didn’t, though, overwhelm it: this was the first 3D movie I’d seen where I kind of felt like the 3D enhanced rather than drowned out the film. So that was kind of cool, and so will seeing it in 2D be.

Saturday we were up and out of the hotel by not quite even 10am, and swung through a few stores on Henry Street in search of gifts for the nephews (and didn’t find any, which was just as well because it turned out their mother had already gotten them what we were looking for) without experiencing the Christmas Crush, because even in Dublin the Saturday before Christmas, the Irish do not get out and about before 11am in any numbers worth mentioning, and indeed only by noon were the streets beginning to get packed. But by that time we’d long since dawdled over to the Grafton Street area, where we were prevented from going nuts in the excellent kitchen store by dint of 1. so many people in there you had to leave to change your mind (it’s a very, very tiny store, so even without people being out en masse it’s just crowded) and more importantly, 2. them being out of some of the things we intended to get. But Ted has a doughnut cutter now, and more chocolate molds. Om nom nom. :) And we popped into a couple vintage shops, which were kinda cool (there was a really great 20’s era dress at one of them, but I didn’t have the €275 to blow on it, and some fine tweed jackets with leather elbows at another, but none to fit Ted), and wandered through St. George’s Street (or something like that) Market, where I found a derby that actually fit Ted. The following conversation ensued:

Kit: Oh my. That’s very good. You should buy that.
Ted: I don’t know. It’s black. I’d need a new coat. And shoes. And slacks or Dockers. I don’t need it right now, anyway.
Kit: I’ll buy you a new wardrobe. We’ve never found a derby that fits you before. You should buy it.
Ted: We could come back for it some other time.
Kit: No, really. I insist. You’re giving Jude Law a run for his money.
Ted: *buys it*

I’ll post a picture later. :)

Then we went to Breic’s seventh birthday party, where Seirid tried desperately to impress the sole (and very cute) little girl who attended, by, among other things, hitting her over the head with a foamcore shield. *laughs* It was a very nice party, really, and Breic got a bunch of good loot and the adults stood around shouting to be heard over the children until it was time for us Longford folk to all head home on the train. And because we are *clever*, we went to the Drumcondra station where the 4pm train stops (many of the others do not), and were able to get on and get *seats*, which struck us as miraculous, without going back into the city centre. So yeah, an absolutely lovely weekend all around, and to top it all off, today it is snowing! Hooray! *beams* (Apparently I need to live somewhere where it’s sunny 80% of the year, there’s 4 or so months of winter, I can bike and recycle, and there is health care available. Is that asking too much? :))

(x-posted from the essential kit)

There's an analogy. I never did post my essay, did I, with the provocative title "How Hitler Gave Facism A Bad Name" -- probably just as well, but the gist of it is that Hitler was so overwhelmingly evil that he made it impossible to seriously accuse anybody else, anywhere, of being a fascist, even if they really are one.

(Somehow Stalin doesn't do the same thing for socialism. Liberals get incorrectly accused of socialism a lot. The difference between that and conservatives being incorrectly accused of fascism is that there doesn't seem to be a societal justification for liberals shaming and disposing of their accuser the same way a conservative can with theirs -- to the point where to accuse a person's political position of being proto-fascist is seen as a worse offense against civility than it is for that person to hold a political position that in actuality is proto-fascist.)

I bring it up because, after reading this thread on slactivist, I think one can say the same thing is true vis-a-vis Bull Connor and racism -- a sort of "How Bull Connor Ruined Racism For Everyone Else" or something. It is, today, more offensive to accuse someone of racism than actually to be racist.

My best birthday wishes to my wonderful wife silkiemom.

I wrote 1500 words this morning, and I want that to be Enough. I want to live in a universe where that *is* Enough. Sadly, that will not get two books written by April 15th, which is really when they both need to be done by. Even if I wrote 1500 words Every Single Day, it wouldn’t be enough. It has to be 2500 words a day, five days a week, plus a couple weeks there where I get in 3K daily. And that doesn’t count the two proposals that need doing by April 15th, too. To get those in I really need to do 3K a day, 5 days a week.

Which really is not an insurmountable amount of writing. But *God*, I really do wish 1500 a day would do it.

Oh well. Whinging time over. Back on my head.

(x-posted from the essential kit)

This pre-arranged taxi to bring us to the gym thing is simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve implemented lately.

The alarm caught me deep in the midst of REM sleep this morning. There is *no way* I would have gotten up if there wasn’t a taxi already on its way. Ted apparently thought, “What the hell is that noise? Why are people talking?” when it went off, so it doesn’t seem likely he’d have gotten up either. But we both did, and I swam (marginally faster than yesterday and Monday) and Ted worked out. So yay us. And after tomorrow we get 3 days off, I said pathetically. :) Though on Friday we’re theoretically getting up at the same time to go into Dublin to go to Ikea first thing in the morning when it opens. Ted questions the necessity of this action (the first thing when it opens part). He may have a point.

As it gets closer to Christmas and my self-allotted one mad batch of candy making I have been wanting to just GO AHEAD AND MAKE AND EAT IT OM NOM NOM…but I realized today that we got back from America and basically went cold turkey on sweets 11 days ago, and it’s my observation that days 1-3 and 10-12 are the hardest for that, so that’s almost certainly part of the ZOMG WANT GOODIES I’m suffering. *snivel* But hopefully this awareness will make it easier to stay good, rather than saying “oh to hell with it, Christmas is next week anyway”. :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 105.2
ytd km swum: 47
ytd wordcount: 263,800

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I should’ve been at work by now, but I was talking with Mom and a fat mistle thrush came to sit in the tree outside our window for a while. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I had no idea posting about the temperature of my house would provide such a platform for discussion. O.O

Although we went to bed at a very sensible hour last night, the alarm clock this morning was quite a rude awakening. I’m quite sure that had I not arranged for a taxi already, we wouldn’t have gotten up. But I had, and we did, and this driver didn’t take us on the longest route possible and the trip cost €2 less than yesterday’s. I have engaged this fellow for tomorrow morning’s trip to the gym as well. So there. That’ll teach the other guy to be a bastard.

Today turned out to be more full of errands than expected, so I didn’t write my whole chapter. Bad Kit. I got about 1400 words, though, and tomorrow should be errandless so I will put the auld nose to the grindstone and make up for what I didn’t get done today. Also, I keep thinking today is Wednesday, probably because Friday and Saturday we’ll be in Dublin (to go to Ikea on Friday, ai, and to go to Breic’s SEVENTH birthday party on Saturday! Wow!) so I’m only looking at a 4-day work week, which must mean Friday is coming up faster than it is, so today must be Wednesday. Only it’s Tuesday, and that’s confusing.

I…am going to dig the tree out of the closet now, and make some effort toward setting it up. And after that I may wrap a present or two, or at least find the wrapping paper.

Ted is making enchiladas for dinner. They smell sooooooo good, and I am sooooo hungry! :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 103.5
ytd km swum: 46
ytd wordcount: 260,800

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I will never be Irish. I will never accept the idea that, as an Irish cabbie recently said to us, one keeps one’s house not so much *warm* as ‘not cold’. (This guy has a Lithuanian girlfriend. Only upon visiting her family in Lithuania did he understand why she kept turning the heat up in Ireland. “Of course,” he said, “their houses are insulated for it, too.”) A house is not sufficiently warm unless I can spread butter on a piece of bread without tearing the bread. I have not, and probably never will, get used to the idea that on a fine day I still need to wear layers *inside* the house even if *outside* I can comfortably wear shorts and a tank top.

I have adapted far enough that I’ll turn the heat off in the rooms I’m not using, except for the kitchen, because the goddamned kitchen ought not double as an ice box. I have adapted in so far as that I wear slippers or fuzzy socks, and sweaters or other layers, which I never did in Alaska except upon going OUTDOORS, which is the natural and reasonable place to wear layers. I’ve learned to close the door of the room I’m in to capture the heat. And I have also learned that a space heater in the frelling kitchen actually warms it up (unlike the radiator, which makes it slightly less cold), and so a space heater it is. That’s as far as I adapt. :)

I posted a bunch of pictures from Alaska and Seattle, she said, making a wrenching transition from one topic to the next. Most of them are probably completely meaningless to everyone but the people in them, and there’s a certain sameyness to them because a significant percentage feature me in the sweater my Mom made for me, so even different days sort of look the same. Still, they’re here, if anybody wants to peruse them.

I called last night for a taxi to pick us up this morning, and one did. And took us by the most circuitous route possible to the gym, which pissed us off to no end. I need to call our regular cabbie and see if he works that early/can give me a number for somebody who’s not an asshole. Anyway, we did go to the gym, and I swam the slowest 1K of my adult life, but I swam, and Ted gymmed, and we are pleased with ourselves. Well. I’m pleased with myself, anyway. :)

And I wrote a chapter today. I have approximately 32 working days before this book is due. Assuming nothing goes wrong, I will just squeak in to having it finished on time. Let us hope nothing goes wrong. Let us hope, in fact, that I have an unexpectedly stellar week and write a lot more than is necessary. But let us be realistic, too, and admit that that ain’t gonna happen until after the new year.

Speaking of which, how can next year possibly be 2010? That’s just *bizarre*.

miles to Minas Tirith: 99.1
ytd km swum: 45ish?
ytd wordcount: 259,400

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Our last day of classes was Friday. It was also a day of the Oswego winter weather I remembered -- not much snow, but what we had being blown by a biting wind. Both classes let out early, though not because of the weather.

( Current standings )

And, with that, I'm off to work on the essay due Tuesday.

A Sunday afternoon two weeks before Christmas is probably not the ideal time to post this, but it will no doubt come up again and since we were just talking about it I thought I’d post.

Ted was considering doing a pre-P-Con dinner on the Thursday evening before P-Con, which would be the 4th of March, 2010. We had vague thoughts of maybe finding an extended-stay sort of apartment in Dublin that would have a reasonably decent kitchen, and holding a dinner there (rather than attempting to take over someone’s kitchen).

Would anybody be interested? Probably if we did that, with the apartment, we’d need a few euro cover charge or something to help offset the cost of the apartment, but on the other hand, if Brits were coming in early for it, we could probably also manage to get a place that would settle several people for the night, thus also offsetting the cost of an extra night in Dublin…

(x-posted from the essential kit)