Like this:

So, how many books a year do I read that are authored by women? I ask since such questions have been going around.

This is from roughly 1999 on because that’s when I started keeping track. It includes rereads.

October 1999 through December 2000: 5 out of 21 novels were written by women. (24%)
2001: 6 of 24. (25%)
2002: 7 of 20. (35%)
2003: 3 of 15. (20%)
2004: 6 of 21. (29%)
2005: 5 of 18. (28%)
First three months of 2006: 5 of 7. (71%)

That last number doesn’t mean I’m currently going out of my way to read female writers. I don’t. I never do. I read what I read.

Number of male writers on my list: 48
Number of women: 22 (31%)

Do these numbers mean anything? No, they most likely don’t.

Like this:

Katherine’s LJ, Blog edition: (’cause I don’t wanna email Eric all these links)

Male monkeys prefer toy cars, females like dolls. The last section of this is connected by the thinnest threads to the rest of it. Better writing would have helped.

The end of crappy internet ads and some spam? Probably not, but NYC’s suit against FreeiPods.com can’t hurt. Not class action. NY attorney general.

GoogleMaps meets the US Census Report. Dang, there’s 21,000 people living in a one mile radius of me?

And lastly, Dissecting Barbie

Edit: Woah, what’s up with this new location feature? It ends up being a link to my *address*? What’s this based on, my IP address? Has LJ announced this feature? I don’t find this particularly cool. I’ve cleared out the “Current Location??? That’s new. At my desk, as usual.” that would be in my tag line, so this might not make much sense to others who…read my journal.

Like this:

Finished Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg today on the bus ride home. And I’m counting it as Book #8 for the year even though it’s a reread. The last time I read it was before we moved to AZ and perhaps even before I met Eric. When I read it the first time, it seemed a pale version of Writing Down the Bones. I couldn’t see how it was different from Bones, just inferior. Of course, that was long ago in my writing career before I began to write novels, before I began to worry about defining success. It speaks to me more now that I have several unpublished books behind me. And it’s gotten me back to free writing. Just writing by hand to be mellow with the writing, not to sweat it. I want to continue with the free writing, and reread some of the other writing books I have laying around.

Now I really need to get some work done. The apartment has gone to pot. I wonder what we’ll have for dinner…

Like this:

Someone is baking bread on this cool, cloudy day and it smells damn good. Probably the lady downstairs who is always cooking something good smelling. Much better than what usually wafts in from our next door neighbors.

Working. No Oblivion for the wicked. The phrase of the day is: “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”

Because it’s sometimes fun doing this kind of work on a book. Things are suddenly brought into very clear focus, and all the flaws, unseen ’til now, need to be fixed. And fixing makes it better.

Disc tonight. Yay!

Like this:

Okay, so, saying I’ve finished a second draft makes me feel better even if it isn’t entirely true…

Fixed a couple of dink things, worked on new Gordelleous related scene (733 words). I want to reread that scene tomorrow and see if it’s still good. Then I want to fix the other bits that will be affected by that. All before disc at 6. Because I really didn’t make as much progress as I wanted to tonight. But I need to call it a night now. My back hurts, and I’m actually getting tired.

Like this:

I’m calling an end to “draft” #2, even though Eric isn’t finished reading yet. Draft is in quotations because it’s all really one big fluid process. That fact that the file name is ModelSpecies13 should say something about that. Not to mention it spent a while as KMM too.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends…

Like this:

Played Oblivion yesterday morning and afternoon. Then we went out for dinner with Sylwester and Magda. It was nice, though the pizza had very doughy dough. Didn’t get any writing done.

Did some rereading this morning:

494 / 504 (98.0%)

I stopped because I came to that end scenes that need to be rewritten, but I’ll probably need to rewrite them later again if I rewrite it now. *blink, blink* First scene needs to be rewritten again too. Lots to add there, so much I don’t know where to begin. Still need some additional relationship stuff.

Played some Oblivion and got tired of getting my butt kicked. Now I’m back out here offering up my butt to my writing. I should just jump in and do…something.