Like this:

We won our first game last night.  It was closer than we would have liked, but it was the first game and we were missing our second pick.  We’ll gel.  Again I worry about not doing right by my teammates, in play and captaining ability.

Worked on market research yesterday, and not much else.  I describe writing last night as “fun, in a frustrating, painful kind of way.”

Today, there’s more of that and also housework.  I’m strangely antsy.  I think I started this really brief update about an hour ago, but I keep wandering off, both figurative and literally, to do other stuff.

I also realized that I need to read three books a month if I want to hit my goal.  I haven’t been reading much other than online stuff lately.

Gawd, my apartment is a mess.  I spend all of my time in two rooms and ignore the rest.  I write, game, eat, watch TV, and read all in the same messy room.  I’ve been trying to be not unhappy about working in the backroom, but I miss my pretty desk.  Damn broken computer.

Could it be that I’m PMSing?

Like this:

I spent this morning and early afternoon doing not-writing.  Mostly disc stuff.  Went to Target and spent $130 on two easily carriy-able bags of goods. 

Btw, there is triticale in my granola bars but alas not quadrotriticale.  (Thanks for the suggestion,melisagogo.  Those are tasty!)

Spent late afternoon and early evening doing market research.  I can no longer take it and have turned to vodka, and perhaps some Model Species editing. 

But first I’m looking for something good to watch on GUBA while Eric is still at practice.  There sure are a lot of shows on hauntings, aren’t there?  I was watching some History Channel thing on UFOs and such and could believe how unsubstantiated the claims were.  Proof Positive might be interesting.  Just to see what passes for science these days…

I’m still a n00b

So.
Yesterday we got the first rejection of Model Species. 

In a mostly unrelated event, Eric decided to reread it.  He’s been meaning to for sometime, but we’ve been going full-speed ahead with Divine Fire instead.  And, while reading, he noticed that the writing isn’t as smooth as it could be.  Probably not as smooth as Pas de Chat before it or Divine Fire after it, though it maybe too soon to tell with DF.  You see, Model Species was a change in process for us, the first book that was majorly a collaboration.  And what’s becoming evident is that my part, the brass-tacks writing, might need to be the final pass before the novel can be “done.”  Regrettable that after all this time writing I sent a publisher (two actually at this point) a draft rather then the best it could be.

Evenings are going to be spent on Model Species with hopes of getting it polished up before WFC (arbitrary deadline).  I am at the cusp of 25K done on Divine Fire, so  I might finish up the scene I’m working on this week.  Or not.    I might, instead of splitting myself between two projects, just work on agent research.

(Note to Eric: I think my problem with the word ‘so’ is that it’s too conversational…)

Like this:

Nutrition Labels Confuse Consumers
What worries me is that the comments made in this article emphasize changing the labeling, stripping information from them, making them simpler.  No one says anything about educating people better to do simple math (Interpretation of nutrition labels requires both reading and math skills, and the combination is in short supply…) or encouraging food manufacturers to stop obfuscating to get a “good” label…

Like this:

Nicole sent out some good news today.  We were offered a bid to regionals despite coming in third at sectionals.  So I get to play this weekend.  Yay!  Wednesday disc might be back this week too, and our first league game is Thursday.  Looks like it’s going to be a good week for disc.

Still, I should have gone for a run today.  My back would probably feel a lot better.

We actually gamed yesterday.  The first time in what seems like a long time.  Went well.  Hopefully we’ll try to get some in on Friday night too.

Writing is going well enough.  No complaints from Eric.  I’m feeling tentative about things, but that’s my general state.  It’s been a decent month thus far.  Not outstanding, but good.

It’s funny listening to music that is very much attached to a certain place and time.  When I bought this album (Aeorsmith’s Greatest Hits), I could not have looked forward in time and predicted today.  No prescience is mine.  Not even a little.

Like this:

What I’m counting as book #21:
Two versions of the American Psycho script.  I got into a conversation a while back on whether this movie was good or absolute crap.  I was about the only person who liked it.  Go figure.  So, when I saw there was an unproduced draft up at Drew’s Script-O-Rama, I figured I’d give it, and the shooting script, a look.  I like reading scripts, and seeing what a director decided would work is interesting.  There were many scenes in common, and as many that were cut from that earlier draft.  For example, scenes that gave some explanation to Bateman’s psychosis were cut.  Big 80s montages were cut, in favor for a more 80s-steeped setting.  Despite voice overs in both, direct hallucinations by Bateman were left out.  Less, in other words, was more in the director’s opinion.  At least in terms of the non-violent scenes.  Mary Harron goes all out during the kills.  That’s also different from the book which left it all very vague as to whether it was in Bateman’s head until the end.  I was amused by the direct Hitchcock Psycho references in the unproduced script.  At one point, Bateman recites Norman Bates’ monologue about traps to Jean…while on a date.  All in all, Matthew Markwalder’s script is an interesting take on the material, but I can see it’s flaws.  Not that the film shot was perfect…

Working…  600 words this morning.  Working my way through other rewrites now.

Like this:

(Links from the past to days that I’ve had in a saved post but have not posted…)

“It’s quite hard to destroy the Earth.”  Good to know.

I wonder if The Meaning of Night is as good as USA Today says it is.  It sounds interesting, though the ‘chilling’ first line doesn’t strike me as such.  Maybe I’m just jaded after reading Highsmith’s Ripley books and Easton Ellison’s American Psycho.

(And a meme while I drink my coffee…)

Look at your LJ userpics list. If you have fewer than 50 icons, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five icons, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five icons, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of ’em. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly why you have it, why it’s interesting to you, what significance does it have.

(I cheated a little, I’ll admit it, and chose some that were more interesting than others.)

Default: 
I’m a minor X-men fan, more so a Jean Grey fan.  She’s a nicely flawed character.  And what can I say, I wanna be a superhero.  That is, I want to get it right, easily, the first time.  It just never happens that way.  It’s the default on my journal, but I don’t use it on many entries.

Ichabod wants to be serious.   He wants to be taken seriously.  He know he looks like a dork.  I figure he might as well just go with it and be insane.  It’s generally my “I’m being silly or at least self-deprecating.  Don’t take me too seriously” icon.

Okay, way back when I played a MUD called Arrant Destiny, my character had a turtle named Herman.  I don’t remember how it got started now.  Eric might recall.  In real life, Heman became my mascot.  I like turtles.  They have the slow and steady thing down.  When life gets to be too much, they tuck their head in and decide to come back in twenty.  (Maybe not the best of coping skills, but it’s too much me to be denied.)  Turtles and hermits go together, as I see it.  I’m a hermit, ask anyone.   So Herman = Hermit = Me.  Now, the most social thing I do it play Ultimate Disc.  How could I resist a turtle playing disc?  And the ‘Original’ part comes from someone on one of the frisbee groups that asked if she could steal my icon…after stealing my icon.

For a long time all my icons were me.  Red-heads.  And therefore the art of Stephanie Pui-Mun Law was used a great deal.  The quote is from the Seals & Croft song “Summer Breeze”.  I prefer the cover by Type O Negative.  It’s my summer icon, my musing icon.

The photo is by Tom Polakis, a guy Eric and I know through frisbee.  The quote…I have completely forgotten who the quote is by.  I want to say Harlan Ellison.  That sounds right.  When it comes down to it, what I really love is night, not darkness.  Night, however beautiful (or bleak), implies that morning will follow.  Darkness on the other hand is featureless and seemingly endless.  In the land of a depressive, you have to believe that it’s only night.

Freshman year in college, I made a laminated collage folder to put writing stuff in.  This is a scan of part of that collage.  My intention is to use it for writing practice posts.

I used to watch Doctor Who with my mom.  Every night at 6 on PBS followed by Star Hustler.  It’s good being a second generation sci-fi fan.  Over the past summer, I’ve come back to that fandom and am enjoying it quite a bit.  I have several Who icons, though I don’t use them much.

There are not enough Roy Batty icons in existence.  Now, my questionable things are more on a writer level than a replicant level.  Like spending this much time of a meme when my writing output has sucked this week…  I think Eric will be on his own going to ASU’s libraries tomorrow.  I need to stay home and pretend to write more.