not worth chewing through the leather straps

Experiment Continues Apace

Was banging my head against Riversinger and Minnowsharp last night. I know I’m close to the end, I can feel it, but the scene just wasn’t cooperating and I couldn’t scrap it entirely. I threatened, grumbled, stared at the screen, paced my office, tried a bit of the t’ai chi video I’m attempting to relearn the movements from. (Long story, another blog post.)

Nothing doing. Absolutely nothing fucking doing, and Introvert Me is drained from all sorts of socializing in the past few days. So I finally threw up my hands, decided I was the worst writer in the world, and went to bed early. I watched an episode and a half of a Chinese costume drama, read some of Gosden’s History of Magic (Genji is irritating me, so it was time for a break), and turned off the light while gnashing my teeth.

And then, this morning, while Boxnoggin was attempting to wedge his nose more firmly into my armpit and my sunrise clock was just beginning to glow, the missing piece of the damn puzzle sashayed into my head. Either a passing spirit took pity on me, the Muse had enough fun and decided to stop fucking around, or my subconscious could finally get through the static. Can’t guess which, don’t care, just glad I’ve got the goddamn scene now.

The only thing remaining is to write it. After breakfast and walkies and running my corpse, during which I’ll turn the whole thing over and over inside my head, planning and looking for weak spots. I did think I’d get at least one zero draft done this week, but it doesn’t look likely. And the weekend will be spent with copyedits which do rather need to be addressed even with everything else going on.

*sigh* It’s always something.

The Attempting To Be Kind To Myself experiment continues apace. Part of that is not agonizing over using the block button. As Cory Booker so memorably put it, you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. And I don’t have to put up with annoying randos, especially the “I didn’t bother to read the article you linked and I have an objection (covered by the article itself) that I DEMAND you answer” ones.

There’s all sorts of stuff happening–publicity requests for the Spring’s Arcana release, household purge-cleaning to do, this business thing and that business thing, nervously anticipating tax season…honestly I don’t even have time to walk into the sea, though the thought of disappearing into a bog and only returning to town every six months with a new manuscript to send in sounds marvelously enticing.

I’ll feel better once this zero is done, and once these goddamn copyedits are off my plate. It’s hard when one feels nobody else in the room even likes the series one has spent so long polishing, let alone is excited about it. Ideally the books would have at least one other advocate; unfortunately that seems impossible under current conditions. I have to believe in the bloody story thrice as hard to make up for it–which is a masterclass in being kind to myself, I guess.

I would have liked some more time on easy mode, but the universe has a vastly inflated idea of my capabilities. Fortunately stubbornness–and a little spite–might be able to compensate.

After all, I’ve come this far. Believing in myself just a wee bit might not be a bad thing, and is perhaps even warranted.

We’ll see.

The 2×4 of Cosmic Benevolence

The stress nausea is still lingering in my corpus, but at least the meeting I was so worried about went without a hitch. Well, only with hitches I was prepared to deal with, that’s a more precise way to put it. Giving things a good whack to reset them is not my preferred method–I like being gentle–but sometimes there’s no choice.

Often, gentle kindness is mistaken for complaisance or weakness. I don’t recommend this route. It leads to the 2×4 of Cosmic Benevolence being applied, and that chunk of power has splinters.

Anyway, there have also been a few good working days in a row, though I’m technically supposed to still be in recovery. I’m as surprised as anyone. I think some energy has been freed up since my holding pattern has been rather violently upended, now that I’ve actually said something about the stress. One can’t poke a universal bear and then quibble with the timeframe of the response, so away we go. If more recovery and re-wrapping of shattered nerves is necessary, it will have to be after I *checks notes* finish these two zero drafts, get a good buildup on the next serial, and revise the second Sons of Ymre book.

I’ve been focused on Dead God’s Heart and another far more troublesome series for so long it feels weird to be considering the new serial, let alone revisions on something else. Frankly I thought the plague or rising fascism would have done me in by now, yet against all odds here I am, trying to heal what I can.

Oh, you thought I was just telling stories? But what do you think those are, hm?

I should probably update the master to-do list hanging above my desktop’s screen. There’s also a positive litter of Post-its growing like coral along the bottom. Some can probably be moved to the corkboard, others can’t be retired until Hell’s Acre is done. And there’s a subscription drop to get sorted too. I’d love to get back to having a few weeks’ worth of those scheduled out–before the pandemic I was running a good month or two ahead, but since then things have been kind of suboptimal.

Go figure.

Plus there’s walkies to accomplish. I’ve finished my coffee but not yet moved in the particular way that will summon a yawning Boxnoggin, so–oh, crud, I just heard his collar jingle. It’s the particular sound of a post-nap shake to settle the hide, and now he’s trotting down the hall.

Best get started, then. Publishing schedules are all very well, but the canine needs his daily jaunt. Running my own tired corpse is probably recommended as well; stress compounds when it can’t be purged. I can use the time and motion to figure out just what the Rook is going to do in this pub…

Off I go.

Knickers, Gnomes, and Flying Low

A little light reading.

I’m still reading LJ Smith YAs, but I’m also reading A History of Underclothes. And my gods, but most of these sound uncomfortable as all get-out. If there are underwear gnomes, they’ve had a much reduced workload in modern times. (I’m sure it hasn’t impacted profits, though.)

There are a couple sales going on, I’ll post them later today–but this morning I am flying low, no stops, no prisoners, and (as movie-Gimli says) no regurgitation. There’s so much to do, not enough time to get it done…and dear gods, I just want to write but that won’t happen until the Friday night session, I’m sure.

I wish you a pleasant weekend, my beloveds. Just gonna keep stabbing until it’s done…

Second Breakfast and Surprising Book

The only problem with rolling out of bed early and reshuffling my morning routine is that it gives me a deep, desperate desire for second breakfast. The older I get, the more I think hobbits had the right damn idea.

I was having some thoughts about mansplaining, hypocrisy, and power this morning. It always used to puzzle me–why, for example, did my childhood abusers require a highly ritualized “submission” after a physical or verbal battering? It wasn’t enough that they had beaten a child into a semblance of submission, they also required a “kiss the ring” moment afterward. This seems common among toxic people, and I wonder about it a lot. Not as much as I used to–another thing about getting older is that I’m more likely to let such things remain in the “dunno why they do it, just know that if I see it, that’s the kind of person I’m dealing with.”

In other news, I woke up with Nik Kershaw playing inside my head. The ol’ skull radio has been flicking around a lot lately; not too long ago it was Wagner, then Shostakovich (like diamond mice, as Tanith Lee would say), then for some reason Taylor Swift, and now the 80s are rampaging through in a steady stream. I’ve learned to just let the brain do what it wills, even if it insists on Hall & Oates during the sacking of an elvish city. (Don’t ask me, I don’t know.)

Which there is more of planned for today. I might get to the section titled Naciel’s Run, which has been (again) in my head for over a year. I also need to let the villain speak a bit in Hell’s Acre, because we’re about to embark on the last blood-drenched ball played out in New Rome. We need to see how he reacts to the news not just of some assassinations, but also the attack on the secondary villain, who I thought was going to be the primary one for a long while.

The books like to surprise me. Which means I will need more tea. The good thing is that plenty of the minutiae of daily nitpicky meatsack-maintenance is out of the way. The bad is, I’m kind of exhausted and waiting for the small amount of caffeine in said tea to flog my grey matter into working.

Changing routines is always like that, though. Eventually this will settle into a new normal. For the moment, Boxnoggin is sprawled on my bed, snoring deeply and no doubt dreaming of chasing geese, my inbox is still on fire but it’s a slow creeping burn instead of leaping flames, and if the work for the day is massive at least it’s also clear-cut, and I know what needs to happen in every case.

So now we embark upon Monday, my beloveds. Oh, and there’s also a new tier over on my Patreon–if you’re interested in Friday night write-ins with yours truly, that is.

See you around.

Bracing For Optimism

Boxnoggin has decided to go back to bed. Apparently a Monday is too much for even his spirit, and the leftover warmth is simply too enticing. Alas, I am forced to coffee and actual consciousness–or whatever approximation of the latter I can manage.

I spent the last of the weekend finishing Rebecca Suter’s The Japanization of Modernity, all about the work of Murakami Haruki. Consequently I think this week’s Reading with Lili will be about Murakami’s fabulous (in every sense) Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which I haven’t read in a hot minute. I was going to do Nancy Price’s Sleeping With the Enemy, but that can wait.

Price’s book got me through some rough times. I didn’t manage to see the movie until five or six years after I’d actually read it, so the two are only vaguely connected inside my head. And every time I water my African violets, certain bits of the book wander through my head.

It’s nice to have a plan–to have more things I want to share. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of cool books to talk about; it’s far more likely troll comments will make the entire project unsustainable, or the platforms I use for streaming etc. will burst into flame and sink into the swamps of corporate malfeasance.

I am also (apparently) a giant optimist this morning.

There’s work cut out for me today. Correspondence, figuring out the next step in Hell’s Acre, prepping for a big revision push–plus some copyedits–once December 1 hits, and a million other things I haven’t looked at the to-do list for. I know I’ll feel better after I get a run in, but at the moment my internal engines are catching and sputtering a bit. While I love the weather this time of year, I absolutely despise “the holidays”, and bracing myself for them is never pleasant.

The coffee has cooled, I feel like I’ve typed very little of real importance, and even though Boxnoggin loves the shelter of a warm bed he’ll be off-kilter all day if I don’t drag him out for walkies. You’d think a dog who protests so much over any deviation from routine and habit might be eager to get out the door no matter the state of the outside world. I can’t really blame him, though. I’d be back in bed if I didn’t have so much to get done today.

Or if not “done”, at least stabbed twice and left with a promise. I’d really rather be working on the bloody fanfic, but paying projects must when the devil drives, or something.

Yeah, I’ll definitely feel better after a run. Already this morning I’ve bandaged a minor injury that will make said run somewhat of a misery, but I need the sweat and endorphins too much to care. At least the laundry’s done, the plants are watered, and someone else is in charge of mopping the kitchen. Damn near a holiday, right?

Courage, my friends. I think I’m at the nadir of my detox from Twitter, and the next few days will see a marked change in both my mood and my productivity. All I have to do is stick today out; I hope your Monday will be similarly endurable.

Wish us both luck, my beloveds. Let’s get this bitch to Mount Doom.

Broken Giant

Shattered on the shoulder.

I’m late to the Friday photo post, my beloveds. Things are suboptimal right now–a series that was very much books of my heart has been killed, and I am mourning. We’ll see what happens once the dust settles–it may be that I just have to write the damn thing anyway in my copious spare time. (Yeah, go ahead, laugh. But where there’s a will there’s a mothafuggin way, and I am slopping over with willpower.)

Heartache or no, Boxnoggin needs his walkies. We were ambling uphill, and he stopped to sniff this scattering of concrete or rock–can’t tell which, I am no geologist. But I looked at the detritus and thought, even a pebble can bring down a giant.

It’s not quite as catchy as some phrases, but it’s giving me a lot of solace today. Also, the arrangement of stone and stem made me think of trees with stone leaves, and that’s an image going into a book someday, I can tell you.

The weekend is almost here. I’m so weary, friends. And yet as long as I can reach a pebble, I have a chance of bringing down whatever I need to.

It’s gonna have to be enough.

Fuss Minimum

The first coffee molecules have hit my epithelial cells, so I’m just waiting for the rest of me to get the sweet life-giving caffeine memo. Boxnoggin is a little perturbed that we’re up while it’s still dark outside, but he’ll adjust. Especially if there’s toast involved, which there will be as soon as my stomach settles and the morning mug is drained.

Yesterday was unsatisfying, but then again, what did I expect of a Monday? I did get some work done, but multiple rounds of updates for the desktop meant plenty of perfectly good working time was spent doing things that weren’t writing. Sure, some administrivia and cleaning got handled, but what I wanted was to be creating. Just settling in my office chair, stretching my fingers, and slipping into other worlds is my preferred way to spend a rainy day. The more I work now, the easier November will be.

At least it is raining, the air is nice and clean, and I got a bit of a run in. I think part of the problem is being unable to really hit the pavement; I miss the endorphins. In any case, I hit a horrid mood halfway through the afternoon, and even cinnamon rolls didn’t help. Fortunately, dinner put paid to most of my nasty temper, and I could spend a little time afterward fiddling with a new video opener. I meant to do a bit of narrating too, but the smoke rasp is still lingering in my throat.

Today I get to run again. Not for long, and not quickly, but it will have to be enough. And Boxnoggin will get a long ramble to wear himself out with. While I’m occupied with both I can build the next few scenes in both Hell’s Acre and Fall of Waterstone so when I settle at my desk both will flow with a minimum of fuss. If all goes well and I treat my throat with gallons of tea today, I might even get the narration done. Of course that last is a completely self-chosen task, but I’d still like to get it handled. I think you guys’ll like what I’m planning.

Boxnoggin is draped across his office bed, not-quite-snoring. Of course, we just rolled out of my bed a little while ago, and he grumble-groused all through the visit to his grand outdoor loo. I think he’s put out that his morning nap schedule has been altered somewhat, and also very annoyed at the damp. Each winter it’s the same thing; he believes that naturally I am in charge of the weather and for some incomprehensible reason have decided to personally inflict rain on his poor delicate paws. “THIS NEVER HAPPENED IN TEXAS,” he moans, despite the fact that we all know it does, indeed, rain in the Lone Star State. (Sometimes quite heavily, too.)

He’ll adjust, but it’ll take a week or two of constant bitching. I can’t throw stones, I react in much the same way to the advent of summer. Between the two of us, nobody’s happy. Enduring relationships have been built on far less, and though I am a cruel goddess whose methods and means are inscrutable to his poor canine brain, I’m also the benevolent matron who dabs bacon grease in his bowl, brushes him, and provides treats on a daily basis. So he puts up with the rain, figuring I must have my reasons, and I put up with his bratty self during walkies, figuring the joy of his presence more than makes up for it. (And, to be fair, plenty of people see him strapped to my waist and decide to give us a wide berth, which is all to the good.)

The world is quiet. The east is greying. The coffee is cooling, and today I have to get Miss Dove home, plan the Rook’s next assassination attempt, and get a Viking elementalist into the throne hall of a particularly stiff-necked elvish king. Oh, and narrate a half-hour or so of something marvelous. All told, it’s nice work if you can get it, and hopefully most of the day will go to plan. I’m sure there will be a few misbehaving moments, but at least it’s not a Monday anymore.

Small mercies, and all that.