Back with a vengeance

After a lovely couple of days, it’s time to get back to work—with a vengeance, since I’m currently behind. I thought I could hit at least my minimum word count while traveling, but there were a couple nights where I was too frakking exhausted to crack open the computer, even for 100 words.

My goals for this week, while I’m up in Oregon, are a minimum of 10K on High Spirits, two short stories, and one Lust Bites essay.

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My oldest friend—we met when we were in first grade—just became a grandmother.

Somebody pass me the smelling salts…

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Gah! Just had a minor meltdown when my Palm keyboard refused to work, but I think now the batteries are dead. Given that it’s been so long since I put the batteries in that I managed to forget that there were batteries, much less where the battery compartment was, I’d say it’s a strong likelihood.

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Blech. It’s taking me forever to get motivated today. Then I’ll write a little bit, and get distracted, and have to start all over again with the motivation. Phooey. Part of the problem is that I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next, so I’m sort of dragging out the current scene. Which I suspect means I should type “and then they went out for pizza and came home and she went to bed,” and just pick the next scene and start writing it.

That sounds weird, doesn’t it? I feel like I’ve got all these little threads, so every so often I’ll brainstorm a bunch of scenes, but I don’t know where they go, because they don’t all lead directly from the main action. When I’m stuck, I just pick one and go for it, because if it doesn’t fit there, it’ll fit somewhere else. Or, in the end, there’s always the chance it doesn’t fit anywhere at all, but at least I’ll have been writing and it’ll spark more ideas.

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Oh, you know how much of a geek I am? I brought three big bags of books up here to trade it at Powells, that’s how much There are no good used bookstores in Ventura County (for mainstream fiction, anyway. Bart’s is fabulous beyond belief for rare and funky books, but not for paperback fiction.) and I figured the car would be mostly empty on the way up and maybe this way I can pick up a few more books because I’ll have a little credit.

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Eargh! New batteries didn’t fix the Palm keyboard! Wail!

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We went out to McMenamin’s for Ruby Ale, and shared a salad and chicken/pesto/garlic calzone, then swung by the funky local market and got, among other things, Green & Black’s ice cream, and that means pretty much all is right with the world.

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Currently Reading: Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie
Lately Listened To: tappity tappity tappity
Recently Watched: How I Met Your Mother