Project: Get Your Life In Order, OMG Seriously
So... I've been living with my parents for the last little chunk of time.>And it's actually been going pretty well, all things considered. I don't have many days where I want to kill my father and we're actually all getting along pretty well.
Well, one of the major bones of contention is that I often times will let my room get a little cluttered during the week, and then do a major clean-up on the weekends. This drives my father nuts. I don't know why. He doesn't clean anything. He nearly had a nervous breakdown last year when Mom had surgery and he would be responsible for *gasp* cleaning his own bathroom.
Anyway. I'm not super bitter about this.
What? I'm really not.
Well, the state of my room and my bathroom was getting to the point where it was driving ME crazy. I planned to clean it yesterday.
And then one of the dogs bounced my laptop. And cracked the motherboard.
And broke the power jack.
So needless to say, I spent yesterday buying a new-to-me desktop system. I batted my eyelashes at the sales guy and got an extremely nice sound system for free. And a free netbook. And reduced prices on the keyboard I bought and the hot-pink mouse. :) So I am writing this to you all from Rose Tyler II. And she is a beauty. And I paid for her myself. And it is glorious.
Anyway. I digress.
I spent most of today cleaning. I cleaned out the bathroom drawers. I threw away medicine that had expired in 1999. I threw out boxes of contacts from five years ago. I threw out make up I never use. I cleaned out my jewelry box and threw away broken pieces of necklaces and earrings that had no matches. It's amazing how much lighter I feel.
<I feel like I've been kind of remiss on keeping y'all apprised of my progress? With having to buy a new computer, they were able to keep all of my documents. Yay! So I'm not any further behind on Leaven of Malice than I already was. I'm finally content with the final edit, which brings me up to 62K words. I mean -- content enough to show to editors and things. I'm still waiting to hear back from the beta on the last chapters, but I've gone over them with a fine-tooth comb two or three times now.
So I've started trying to draft query letters and researching agents.
In the meantime, I'm working on my Dust and Steam project, which I keep promising you all, but nothing ever comes of it. I'm working on the third story. I will have five by the time I publish the collection, and it will be available on your Kindle or Nook or what have you. Once all the stories are complete, I will start serious work on that.
We're coming up on parent-teacher conferences, which may be my least favorite part of my job. I don't mind talking to parents daily about the progress of their kid, but there's something about the formal setting that makes normally-relaxed parents into hyper-sensitive neurotics. I spend most of time over the next two weeks reassuring parents that development happens at different paces for everyone, and if I had major concerns, I would express them immediately.
Boy howdy.
I've also been reading "Why Gender Matters" by Leonard Sax because I have a group of 3-year-old boys which exhaust me. The book's given me a few ideas on how to handle conflict between them and how to encourage them academically and make things like reading interesting to them. It's also given me some ideas on what NOT to do. I recommend it. Some of it isn't exactly "PC", but then I don't think the world that we actually inhabit is very PC, either.
And that's my update! I'm sorry I've been so remiss in posting regularly, if you've missed me. I've been commenting where I can, on those entries which I feel like I have something to say on. Hopefully I can remember to post more often. I can promise you a fiction post, sometime in the near future. I'd like to give you a teaser of a story that's going in "Dust and Steam". It's called Train to Nowhere.
Well, one of the major bones of contention is that I often times will let my room get a little cluttered during the week, and then do a major clean-up on the weekends. This drives my father nuts. I don't know why. He doesn't clean anything. He nearly had a nervous breakdown last year when Mom had surgery and he would be responsible for *gasp* cleaning his own bathroom.
Anyway. I'm not super bitter about this.
What? I'm really not.
Well, the state of my room and my bathroom was getting to the point where it was driving ME crazy. I planned to clean it yesterday.
And then one of the dogs bounced my laptop. And cracked the motherboard.
And broke the power jack.
So needless to say, I spent yesterday buying a new-to-me desktop system. I batted my eyelashes at the sales guy and got an extremely nice sound system for free. And a free netbook. And reduced prices on the keyboard I bought and the hot-pink mouse. :) So I am writing this to you all from Rose Tyler II. And she is a beauty. And I paid for her myself. And it is glorious.
Anyway. I digress.
I spent most of today cleaning. I cleaned out the bathroom drawers. I threw away medicine that had expired in 1999. I threw out boxes of contacts from five years ago. I threw out make up I never use. I cleaned out my jewelry box and threw away broken pieces of necklaces and earrings that had no matches. It's amazing how much lighter I feel.
<I feel like I've been kind of remiss on keeping y'all apprised of my progress? With having to buy a new computer, they were able to keep all of my documents. Yay! So I'm not any further behind on Leaven of Malice than I already was. I'm finally content with the final edit, which brings me up to 62K words. I mean -- content enough to show to editors and things. I'm still waiting to hear back from the beta on the last chapters, but I've gone over them with a fine-tooth comb two or three times now.
So I've started trying to draft query letters and researching agents.
In the meantime, I'm working on my Dust and Steam project, which I keep promising you all, but nothing ever comes of it. I'm working on the third story. I will have five by the time I publish the collection, and it will be available on your Kindle or Nook or what have you. Once all the stories are complete, I will start serious work on that.
We're coming up on parent-teacher conferences, which may be my least favorite part of my job. I don't mind talking to parents daily about the progress of their kid, but there's something about the formal setting that makes normally-relaxed parents into hyper-sensitive neurotics. I spend most of time over the next two weeks reassuring parents that development happens at different paces for everyone, and if I had major concerns, I would express them immediately.
Boy howdy.
I've also been reading "Why Gender Matters" by Leonard Sax because I have a group of 3-year-old boys which exhaust me. The book's given me a few ideas on how to handle conflict between them and how to encourage them academically and make things like reading interesting to them. It's also given me some ideas on what NOT to do. I recommend it. Some of it isn't exactly "PC", but then I don't think the world that we actually inhabit is very PC, either.
And that's my update! I'm sorry I've been so remiss in posting regularly, if you've missed me. I've been commenting where I can, on those entries which I feel like I have something to say on. Hopefully I can remember to post more often. I can promise you a fiction post, sometime in the near future. I'd like to give you a teaser of a story that's going in "Dust and Steam". It's called Train to Nowhere.