What I did on my weekend…

My to-do list

PETERMBALL Journal , , , , ,

At some point today I’m planning on making cupcakes, which means I have to clean the mixing bowl, which means I have to eat the salad currently sitting in the mixing bowl as it occupies a shelf of my fridge. And I frickin’ hate salad. There is no reasonable excuse for lettuce.

At some point today I’m going to continue going through the Cold Cases draft, engaging in all the chapter-by-chapter tinkering that needs to be done before I hand the manuscript over. I am still unsure of this book, but that doesn’t bother me too much. I am unsure of everything I write that’s longer than 1000 words.

At some point today I’m going to vacuum the seemingly endless carpet of shed hair that covers the floor of my house. On the plus side, that’s not going to be a problem for the next few months. There is some pretty simple math that gets done when your lazy, your hair is irritating you, and you own a set of hair clippers. I release the following photograph into the wild in order to forestall the inevitable “You’ve had a haircut” conversations that are likely to occur over the next few weeks:

At some point today I’m going to remember where I put my beanie, ’cause my head is cold without all the hair that used to insulate it.

At some point today I’m going to enter the handwritten short-story I’ve been working on when I go to bed into the computer, and I’m going to attempt to finish it.

At some point today I’m going to mention that an audio version of Clockwork, Patchwork, and Raven is being put together by the Beam Me Up podcast and part one is already live.

At some point today I’m going to watch the new episode of Doctor Who, although given the length of my to-do list this may not happen until tomorrow.

At some point today I’m going to write an author bio and mail it off. I’m also going to write 750 words on my novel, 750 words on my short story, and not freak out about how bad either of these things are at the moment.

In Which Deadlines Make My Life Very Tiny

PETERMBALL Journal

It’s one PM on a Monday. The rejection count has risen by one (6 for the year). I’m spawning new projects at a rate of knots instead of toying at the tangled web of problems that is the novella I’m meant to be finishing. I took this morning off to listen to Jeff Buckley’s Grace and watch the latest episode of Doctor Who. All in all, rather standard for the last-week-of-a-deadline rush.

I’ve noticed that deadlines make my life very small and non-bloggable. I’m leaving the house today – just heading out to pick up groceries and check my PO Box – and I’m unfeasibly excited about the prospect of seeing other people for the first time in about ten days (I try to avoid this kind of non-contact, but last week was a mess of social engagements that got cancelled for various reasons and I didn’t have the energy to scrounge up replacements at the last minute). There will be more later, when I’m feeling human again.

Stacking Books in Piles

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , ,

It seemed like a slightly manic goal when I set it back in July of last year, but my question to read 104 books in the space of a year may actually work out. I finished Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own this morning, which brought my reading total up to 74 books, then put together the final thirty books I’m planning on finishing between now and July 31st. They now live on my bedside table, a pile of words that can be beaten down day by day until I finally clear the whole damn thing.

To make the goal I need to clear three books off this pile a week, which is a little less daunting than it should be because of my bad habit of reading half a book and getting distracted (and cherry picking stories out of anthologies and collections). There’s a lot of bookmarks already in that pile, which should cut the reading time down a little.

Course, after I finish this pile, I have to tackle the to-read bookshelf I’ve set aside for the next eighteen months.

I really do need to declare a moratorium on new books at some point, especially since there’s a whole ‘nother bookshelf of unread books in the back of my wardrobe (right about the point where Narnia should be). Admittedly, *that* shelf is stuffed to the gills with stuff that’ll probably go in the next book cull, but it seems like cheating to take things off the list by throwing them out.