Back at the Dollhouse/Tasks For Today
Well, I'm back at the Dollhouse after my time at the Doghouse... that is, at my parents' house, watching their property and dogs for them while they were away. My mother asked me if I'd like to do it regularly, but I declined. It took a lot out of me. I think I could do it again without being so drained because a big part of it was the learning curve with the dogs. I could keep them under control on walks without nearly as much physical exertion by the end of the three weeks than I could at the beginning, for instance. But spending three weeks of every month from now until spring away from my own computer set-up, my things, my cozy sleeping nook, and my beloved Mr. Dorian Mome Rath Abomination Gray just didn't sound appealing.
I got a lot of work done at the start of my stretch with the dogs, before the day-to-day routine started to wear me down, and my "work in progress" idea helped me get a fair bit done even afterwards. If I'd succumbed to the temptation to split the last MU chapter I would have had two chapters last week, but as it is there was a 5,000 word one so there would only have been a very little bit more to read if I'd done so. I spent most of yesterday resting and I'm going to need to do a bit of that today, but I'm also eager to get back to work. I've picked up a few new tools and tricks to streamline what I do, including the use of Google Documents. I looked at Google Docs when they were new, and some combination of the system in its infancy and the computer I was on made it seem very kludgy and clunky, not at all something that I would enjoy using or be able to put my trust in.
But my friends have been using it quite a bit with no complaints, and when I was looking for a medium to share my works in progress it was one of the suggestions so I ended up signing back to check it out. I rejected it for that purpose because there's no way I can see to make it "read only" to the public. But it's very nice and easy to use, and it really suits my style of writing which often involves a lot of moving around and switching between my desktop computer and my laptop at whim. Posting my work in progress via Livejournal facilitated that a bit because once I'd updated the Under Construction Post I could get that work off, but since I don't actually do my work in the Livejournal post field that involves copying and pasting and sometimes reformatting things, which isn't as conducive to switching as I'd like. From my experiments with Google Documents, it seems like I can walk away from the desktop computer to throw around a bean bag for a few minutes while I work things over in my head, and then grab my laptop and it's already there ready to be worked on some more. Win!
This is especially nice at the Dollhouse, since my laptop and my desktop are often on separate floors. Using Google docs means I'll never have to go up or down two stories in order to fiddle around with what I've written on the other computer in order to continue working on the one that's calling to me at the moment.
Aaaaaaaanyway, here's what I've got on tap for today... it's going to be a fairly light day because it's a low-energy day.
Edited to add: Today's been a very low spoon-count day, as I'm still in a recovery phase, but I've been surprised at how easy it was to get ~1,500 words of MU out by not sitting and focusing on it constantly. I've crossed off the MU item since I do have a good start and I think it'll be finishable tomorrow, but I might poke around more with it later anyway.
I meant to do the Optional Extra Credit task after everything else was done, but it kept eating up my brain so I went ahead and did it second. The amount of time and energy I spent trying to ignore it is the reason I stopped numbering the tasks a while ago... I guess I need to not label any of them "Extra Credit", either. Creative work comes as it will.
I got a lot of work done at the start of my stretch with the dogs, before the day-to-day routine started to wear me down, and my "work in progress" idea helped me get a fair bit done even afterwards. If I'd succumbed to the temptation to split the last MU chapter I would have had two chapters last week, but as it is there was a 5,000 word one so there would only have been a very little bit more to read if I'd done so. I spent most of yesterday resting and I'm going to need to do a bit of that today, but I'm also eager to get back to work. I've picked up a few new tools and tricks to streamline what I do, including the use of Google Documents. I looked at Google Docs when they were new, and some combination of the system in its infancy and the computer I was on made it seem very kludgy and clunky, not at all something that I would enjoy using or be able to put my trust in.
But my friends have been using it quite a bit with no complaints, and when I was looking for a medium to share my works in progress it was one of the suggestions so I ended up signing back to check it out. I rejected it for that purpose because there's no way I can see to make it "read only" to the public. But it's very nice and easy to use, and it really suits my style of writing which often involves a lot of moving around and switching between my desktop computer and my laptop at whim. Posting my work in progress via Livejournal facilitated that a bit because once I'd updated the Under Construction Post I could get that work off, but since I don't actually do my work in the Livejournal post field that involves copying and pasting and sometimes reformatting things, which isn't as conducive to switching as I'd like. From my experiments with Google Documents, it seems like I can walk away from the desktop computer to throw around a bean bag for a few minutes while I work things over in my head, and then grab my laptop and it's already there ready to be worked on some more. Win!
This is especially nice at the Dollhouse, since my laptop and my desktop are often on separate floors. Using Google docs means I'll never have to go up or down two stories in order to fiddle around with what I've written on the other computer in order to continue working on the one that's calling to me at the moment.
Aaaaaaaanyway, here's what I've got on tap for today... it's going to be a fairly light day because it's a low-energy day.
- Make an Under Construction post for TOMU #461 and get a good start on it.
- Work on the Tribe Under Construction post. Update Tribe if significant progress is made.
- Let everybody know about the awesomeness that is happening at Apex Magazine under Cat Valente's watch, including the literary debut of the internet's own popelizbet with a long-form poem inspired by one of my favorite pieces of non-Shakespearean literature to be adapted to the screen with the aid of Kenneth Branagh that isn't Harry Potter or The Mighty Thor, and the other being Cat's targeted call for submissions for writers who are Muslim or of Arab descent to produce a special November issue as a sort of counter to Elizabeth Moon's execrable commentary on Muslims, 'Murika, and "the virtues of civilized people".
- Optional Extra Credit: Make a post about how my long-gestating RPG project has managed to pull itself together in my head when I wasn't looking.
Edited to add: Today's been a very low spoon-count day, as I'm still in a recovery phase, but I've been surprised at how easy it was to get ~1,500 words of MU out by not sitting and focusing on it constantly. I've crossed off the MU item since I do have a good start and I think it'll be finishable tomorrow, but I might poke around more with it later anyway.
I meant to do the Optional Extra Credit task after everything else was done, but it kept eating up my brain so I went ahead and did it second. The amount of time and energy I spent trying to ignore it is the reason I stopped numbering the tasks a while ago... I guess I need to not label any of them "Extra Credit", either. Creative work comes as it will.