Late Night Snack

I started out the evening with the intention of doing some book keeping then work on my book (ha ha!), but it dawned on me that I am nearly out of make-ahead meals so I think I will have to put off writing for the time being and cook up some chilli.  I hope the neighbours don't mind the smell so late in the evening.  Tough.

I am trying to be more financially conscious and one of the ways I've been doing that is by not eating out any more (with the occasional exception for close friends if I can afford it).  When I look at all the money I used to blow on eating and drinking, it makes me mad at myself.  I'm at a point in my life where I really (really) need to turn things around and brown-bagging it is one of those life style changes I've made.  Aside from a few good chilli recipes, I also found a great magazine that has recipes for dinners that have only 3 main ingredients.  Cheap, easy, and good for me.  What more can a bachelor ask for?

A couple million dollars wouldn't hurt...

Cross-Roads

It's been far too long since I've written anything, let alone anything worth keeping.  Even now as I write this entry I feel like a ham-fisted amateur.  A few words come out, but I strike them down with the Backspace key.  A few more words emerge and grow into a couple lines, but they reek of hackery and I mow them down as well.  I'm better than this, I tell myself, but a nagging doubt persists.  Am I?  Then why, after all these years, am I still a fly swarming a flickering bulb?  Tonight is the first night in months, probably almost a year, that I will try to write something meaningful, something worth building on.

A Letter to Myself

Hey,
I know what you're thinking: "This is never going to end."  You're tired of treading water.  Your legs are cramping and your arms feel like they're made of lead.  You're terrified that you're going under and your lungs will fill with water and you'll slip without a sound beneath the dark and icy waves.  You're afraid there won't be a place for you in the future.

Don't be afraid.

You made a lot of colossal mistakes over the years, the long range kind, the variety that lurk in the background or that didn't seem all that pressing at the time as you blathered on through life.  Those mistakes have caught up with you and right now you're reaping the poison fruit, but it's not going to be all bad.  Like the man said, "This too shall pass."

You're aware of your mistakes and you've corrected them which is the first step in turning things around for yourself.  The next step is not wavering, not breaking, not giving in to the temptation to yield.  You've learned your lessons, every one.  The night will end.  You'll see the sun come up again in the east and you'll be ready for the day when you can live free, when you can live as you had always imagined. You will have dominion over your life.

So hang on and hold fast.  Don't be afraid.

Crein

Shirley's Bay

"No, it's not Sunder, but it is writing."  That's what I've had to tell myself these last few nights as I've sat down to write a novella about Colbrit Niemeier and Det. Amanda Garrett.  You may remember Garrett from a piece I put up a few months back (remember "rosie" written in breath on a cold window pane?).  I reread that piece a few times and decided there was something there, between the two of them, that I wanted to explore but I didn't have an idea for the longest time.

That is, until last week when an interesting little paragraph from the police beat section in the local paper caught my eye.  "Police are seeking help from the public in locating the occupant of a vehicle found unattended near the water in the Shirley’s Bay area.  Investigators say they can’t confirm the identity of the person who was driving and they have not been able to reach the owner."  My writer's ears pricked up and I took down some notes and let the idea percolate.  What I've come up with so far feels pretty good, despite being in raw, shit draft form.  I'm excited to see where it ultimately leads.  Maybe in a few weeks I'll have something to share.

Sunder: Day 70

Nine hundred and eighty-two words to start off Chapter One of Sunder.  Nine hundred and eighty-two of the most reluctant words I've written in a long time.  I wrote last that lately writing felt like learning how to walk again.  I picked up a few shin scrapes tonight.  All in all though, the work may hold up.  We'll have to see. 

We'll try again tomorrow and see how much progress we make.  For now, it's back to the apartment and off to bed.

Falling

All the planning in the world won't help you when it comes time to put into words the story you've been dreaming for so long.  It seems to stumble along like an infant, hardly able to even stand up on it's own at first much less take a few steps.

Very frustrating.

Wi-Fi Capable

Finally setup a wi-fi router in my apartment.  Nice.  Very nice.  The convenience of surfing the net from the comfort of my easy chair makes me regret not having done this sooner.

Sunder: Day 69

Started writing the actual prologue today.  In a week or two I will have something that I can throw up on Authonomy.com.

I'm knocking off early because I didn't sleep last night and I have an early AM car appointment.  They are going to replace the "right rear stabilizer link insulator" that has worn out, amazingly, after eight long years of service.  Piece by piece, I'm buying myself a new car. ;)

Truer words were never spoke...

"I had been only a mediocre caretaker of most of the things left in my hands, even of my talent."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sunder: Day 68

Worked on outlining one of the major background events for Sunder: The Assassination of Samsa Litmanen.

Sunder: Day 67

Been a busy couple of days at work and it's encroaching on my writing time a little.  I still made time to write this week but I haven't bothered to update anything here because there hasn't been any developments worth noting.  There is a scene I am working on that takes place in NYC about 500 years in the future and since I have never been there and won't have the time or the funds to travel there any time soon I have been doing a lot of peripheral research on some key locations in that great city--key locations to the story, not necessarily key tourist places. 

It's been fun.  I've been using Google Maps to get familiar with some of the landmarks and major streets that I figure will still be there in 500 years.  I've been looking up those places in Flickr.com to get a sense of place so I can get some of the details right...or at least some of the details that I will adjust forward in time.  The Empire State Building.  The old Fuller Building (or Flatiron Buiding) in the Flatiron District.  Madison Square Park.  Google's Street View has been a huge help, too.

Finally got to sit down and do some actual writing tonight so I'm happy with that, even though I'm knocking off a bit early.  I got 1500 words down, but I can't stop yawning and my eyes are starting to water so that's a sign that this writer is running out of steam.  Shut it down for tonight and get back to it tomorrow night.

Sunder: Day 66

It's snowing like hell outside.  It's the first week of March and it's snowing like hell outside.  I shouldn't sound so dumbfounded: this is Canada after all.  I've seen it snow in April.  I've heard tell of it even snow as late as early May on cold evenings.  My problem with this particular snow is that it is coming down with all the enthusiasm of a December storm.  The city's plows have been up and down the street outside the office twice in the two hours I've been working on Sunder.  That can't be good.

I'm tired of Winter.  I'm tired of being cold and I'm tired of all the white.  And it's not even all white either.  The crusty banks along the roads, so tall and proud now, have crusty bases the colour of black coffee about six inches up from the road and they start to pale as you climb upward from there.  There's sand and salt and grit everywhere, including in the foyer of my apartment.  I have to vacuum the mat at the entry way nearly every other day and, being a bachelor with better things to do, you can see why I hate Winter more and more as the season deepens.  Ugh.  Or Brr.  Sigh...

Work went well on Sunder tonight. 

• There is a big body of water that encircles the Laurence-Freemantle city-station (nicknamed The Wheel by its residents) and I plotted out where Echols body is discovered and named a few of the smaller bodies of water near the discovery site.
• Dug through some of my old notes and made corrections to the ME's name and sex.
• Looked up some information about Manhattan Island's famous neighbourhoods for use in an upcoming scene.
• Niemeier and his partner are getting deeper into their investigation along with Hercus and Purnell, Detectives 3rd Grade who round out their investigation squad.

I don't want to give too much away in this blog, but I will say that I'm pleased with the way things are unfolding.  I am cautiously optimistic that this work will actually stick and become something other people will find entertaining. 

Sunder: Day 65

Don't have much to report tonight other than I showed up at the keyboard again.  I made a little forward progress in the time I was here (about 600 words) which is something I guess.  I spent a lot of time doing some medical research on some injuries Echols received.  I also spent some time making corrections and cleaning up some of last night's work.  If Sunder were a house I were building then I'd have to say I've alredy got the general shape drafted and I'm now starting to work on banging together the framing and the interior walls.  At this very early stage it's just a lumber skeleton of the exterior (or part of the exterior if you really want to put things into perspective).

Part of me is very impatient to get underway, to start pecking away at the novel and tell the story, but I keep reminding myself how that tactic inevitably results in a fatal stall when I come across some stumbling block in the form of a crucial detail I don't know anything about or a plot problem I can't resolve.  I had to force myself two or three times tonight to get back to roughing out the notes for the prologue and it has helped.  Those stumbling blocks I mentioned did indeed occur, but I didn't feel so much frustration about stopping to do ad hoc research.  Could it be, after all these years as a struggling, faltering hobbyist I have finally hit upon a method that works for me?  Good lord!  Did it take other writers this long?

Sunder: Day 64

Beautiful day, but cold this morning.  The tires were frozen solid and spun out a few times on the raised ice patches that have formed on the streets like scabs.  I need to get proper winter tires because clearly the all-seasons aren't cutting it in this kind of weather, but not until the fall.  This close to Spring it would be a waste of money.

Had a good day at work.  Managed to get a letter print/mail merge process working that I have always had trouble with.  The trouble stemmed from unfamiliarity, but now that I've got it down pat, I can update several of my test scripts with this new process and extend the reach of the testing program.  Woo hoo!

Had a good night of writing.  I worked on the second part of the prologue which introduces Det. Colbrit Niemeier.  I started laying out this part of the prologue with the discovery of Helen Echols' body and the start of the investigation into her homicide.  I had a bunch of good ideas, some of which I was unable to get down because I'm knocking off early again, but they'll keep until tomorrow.  I don't want to make a habit of oversleeping so if it means I have to start at six instead of seven or put in an hour or so less...well, so be it.  The day job is the only one paying the bills at the moment so it deserves the lion's share of my energy.

Sunder: Day 63

It's been pretty awful weather all day.  Started out with snow and ice pellets this morning and it went straight downhill to rain just before lunch.  There is so much rainfall expected this weekend that Environment Canada has been broadcasting flood warning for low lying areas in my region due to the vast amount of runoff from meltwater and rain.  The danger is not just from the rivers and streams bursting their banks, but the actual roadways since so many storm drains have been buried under snow banks and frozen over.  I hit a particularly wide and deep patch of flooding tonight on my way here.  Nothing happened except quite the wall of water flying up from my fenders (thank God for those Michelin HydroEdge tires!) but it's still a stern warning from Mother Nature: "Slow down!"

Did some running around this morning to pick up some groceries for the week.  Roasted a chicken tonight and I picked up a top sirloin roast for tomorrow.  Also picked up a salmon steak and a couple pork chops for midweek.  Going to use some of the leftover chicken in a couple pasta dishes that I have recipes for.  Along with the veggies and a few canned goods I have everything I need to take me through until next pay day.  Buying all fresh stuff means I avoided having to pay HST on a lot of things.  I love stickin' it to The Man!

I began working on the second part of the prologue tonight.  I mentioned in an earlier post how I was reworking some old ideas--specifically the ideas surrounding the murder of Helen Echols.  I cemented the new ideas in my mind, but I'm reserving them strictly as background and what the reader will experience is the homicide investigation led by Niemeier and Malmburg for which I also have some general ideas.  My goal for tomorrow night is to plot out roughly how that investigation will unfold and what seeds to plant for the rest of the novel.

For now, off to bed and to sleep.

Sunder: Day 62

More progress on the prologue, though I'm going to knock off earlier tonight than I have been for the last couple of weeks, but more on that later.

I think I may have mentioned several posts ago how some of the ideas that I came up with earlier on have been giving way to newer, better ideas.  The story asserted itself again tonight and I have refined a major portion of the first part of Sunder.  I am still going with the the Echols/Solis murder, but I have four pages of jot notes that have changed the motive for the extortion plot and the subsequent murder.  A new twist presented itself that I am very happy with, one that I hope readers will be, too.  All of this new material will expose some of the skeletons that the beleaguered hero Niemeier has been trying to keep hidden. 

Tonight's work has also highlighted some other areas that I need to work on in addition to putting down the foundations of the prologue: character descriptions/histories (brief ones, one to two pages, for the minor characters) and notes about significant places in the story.  I can think of at least five character bios that I need to work on and three, maybe four, settings that should be fleshed out.  I feel that I should do these things now so that I can get to know those people and places so that when it comes time to actually (finally) begin writing the prologue I won't have to break the rhythm in order to conjour something up.  It may make for a stronger piece of writing in the end.  Who knows?

I'm knocking off at ten tonight instead of the usual 11 or 12 that I have been keeping lately because I cannot keep up that schedule.  By the time I got home and got to bed it was getting well onto 1AM or later and I still had to work the next day.  So, from now on, 10PM is the limit.  It means a little less writing time, but I can keep the pace up all week. 

Sunder: Day 61

Got more writing done tonight, but I'm exhausted.  Knocking off early.

Sunder: Day 60

One of the books I'm studying as research for Sunder is titled The New Brain by Richard Restak.  I'm not terribly far into it at the moment, but it's a fascinating read.  One of the major concepts at its core is something called "neuro-plasticity" which in layman's terms simply means the brain's ability to adapt over time to most of the circumstances we put ourselves in.  The brain can physically rewire itself, a notion that was scoffed at not that many years ago. 

One of the examples that Restak uses is learning to play an instrument and mastering the associated finger movements.  He says that at first the finger movements may feel awkward, even uncomfortable, and that is because the brain has not created any permanent neural pathways to coordinate the movement.  However, as a student practices, the brain recruits more and more neurons to form evermore stable neural "circuits" to make the movements more efficient. 

This discovery of neuro-plasticity was made quite recently thanks to the development of functional MRI technology and it has all sorts of practical applications in everyday life--not just for music and sports, but in our work and even in cognitive therapy to get our emotional lives under control. 

In my case, and in particular with writing, I think neuro-plasticity is beginning to free up my imagination, that is if the material I produced tonight is any indication.  These new ideas are inventive and suspenseful and they stand a better than even chance of making it into the final version of the book.  My point is this: whatever mysterious cluster of neurons that is the all-holy seat of the Imagination, it is getting a helluva workout and it's paying off.  I'm very happy.

I'm also very tired.  Time to go home and go to sleep.

Sunder: Day 59--Prologue

Another great night for writing.  Piece by piece this project is beginning to take shape. 

I am constantly reminded of Kate Braverman's beautiful quote about the craft of writing: "You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid.  One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon when the fingers bleed."  How much sketching went into the pyramids before they found a design they could start to work with?  How many formal plans?  How many calculations?  I am beginning to see that unlike some writers I cannot simply sit down and write one line at a time from beginning to end.  I am beginning to see (finally...after how long?) that it is truly an iterative process for me. 

First comes long conversations with K about the idea, then brief half page sketches, snatches of dialogue, a striking description that captures a mood or a moment in time.  After that comes a full length synopsis--even if it is raw--just to get the broad strokes of the idea down on paper and out of my head.  The phase I'm on now is a slow and methodical process of laying the actual groundwork of who does what and when.  I am discovering now what actually works and what doesn't.  The characters--and even the story itself--are beginning to assert their own influence over the story.  Ideas for the prologue that I thought were great at first have been tossed aside in favour of new ones that seem to come more from Charlotte and her world than from me.  This entire process is an unfolding, the way a flower bud cracks then slowly begins to unfurl itself to the sun petal by petal.  Everything the blossom is was in that tight little bud.  Everything the flower is was contained in its seed--the roots, the stem, the leaves and the petals.  Sunder is creating itself in collaboration with me. 

It's been a productive night and it's time to go home now.  Another long day ahead of me at the office then another evening here to cut more stone.

Sunder: Day 58

Another great night for writing.  It's late, though, and I have a full day tomorrow so not a lot of time to dwell on accomplishments beyond a word count: 1263.  More tomorrow.

Sunder: Day 57

A good night for thinking and piecing things together.  A good night for writing, too, but more for inserting vital parts that were overlooked instead of extending what had come last night.  I worked on details, both in terms of setting and character, and this was interspersed by brief periods of reading (Tau Zero by Poul Anderson).

There is other reading to be done that I have neglected.  Mining the Sky by John Lewis.  Entering Space by Robert Zubrin.  The New Brain.  Synaptic Self.  The Ethics and The Politics by Aristotle.  These and other books (research material) too numerous to rattle off here, but that I have accumulated with all the best of intentions and then let gather dust on my shelves.

So much wasted time to make up for.

Sunder: Day 56--Prologue

With the arrival of our new Director of Software Development I have been ejected from my dark, quiet writing place. I tried writing at my cube, but I don’t always produce the best material there. It’s too bright. It’s too close to co-workers who may be labouring late into the evening and the temptation to talk to them is always too great for me to resist. I need solitude to write. I need silence or at the very least muffled ambient noise. Earplugs provided the silence, but wearing them for more than an hour puts pressure on the inside of my ear canal which turns into yet another kind of distraction. The writer spirit within me is a fussy old codger.

So now I find myself still at the office, but not in the formerly empty Sales Office that I enjoyed. I am comfortably set up in the Friedman Boardroom. This used to be an office. Actually I believe it used to be Chad’s old office. The wide, solid wood desk is gone now and so are the prints he hung on the walls. In their place are a small boardroom table and a wall-mounted LCD monitor.

In its favour are comfortable leather chairs. It’s in the Finance and Admin section of the corporate office, clear on the opposite side of the building from R&D and late-labouring co-workers. I am set up with my desk lamp, my coffee and a wide window in front of me with the steel venetian blinds pulled down but angled so I can still see the view of Hunt Club Road. The only noise that I have to contend with is the ambient sound of evening traffic as it passes by. No one else uses this space after hours or on the weekends so that means I don’t have to re-arrange monitors and keyboards to suit my fussy habits. For all intents and purposes, during off-hours, this space is mine.

It feels kind of good. I think I like this space a little more than the Sales Office (and I really liked that space). I can hone my craft here. I can cultivate patience (as E. B. White would say).

LATER--I don't know if the change of venue had anything to do with it, but I got a lot done tonight.  It's nearly twelve thirty and I managed to get 1205 words down on the page for Sunder's prologue, a huge improvement over what I got done last night (which was next to nothing if you don't count the "ice breaker" I jammed down).  Pretty tired right now, but excited, too.  Time to pack up and head home.

Practice

Sat down to start writing Sunder's prologue tonight, but nothing came out. Oh, there were a few hesitant lines, but nothing that I could sink my hooks into and ride along with. This went on--typing and deleting, typing and deleting--for the better part of a half an hour until I decided to write something else so I opened Flickr.com and trolled through random images for an interesting picture. My eyes rested on one for all of a split second before my finger clicked onward to the next page. I hit the Back button, but the page, being random, had expired. So I had to write from that fleeting memory.

--a small window on an overcast winter's day; through the window the background was gray and black and white, amorphous and out of focus; under the window was a bookshelf with items cluttered all over it, maybe vinyl records, maybe magazines; on the pane itself, in the condensation that marked the passing billow of hot breath, in a child's unpracticed lowercase hand, was a girl's name--

A gloomy chill descended over Colbrit Niemeier the instant he crossed the hallway into the little girl’s bedroom. The room light was off, but the window shade was up and the room was filled with cold, watery light that washed the vibrancy out of the colours on the walls, the cartoon bedspread and the toys scattered all over the floor. It felt like a set on a badly designed play. He looked around, noted the small desk, the perfectly made bed, nightstand, books leaning helter skelter in the small bookcase, avoiding for as long as possible the still form under the sheet.

“Has CSU been through here?” he asked.

Det. Amanda Garrett nodded curtly.

“The whole room’s been scanned and catalogued. The holo-shop boys are starting their render as we speak.”

Colbrit nodded absently and lowered himself onto the child’s bed, easing his weight onto it, scared it might give way under the fullness of his frame. He glanced through his notebook one more time, flipping pages idly and never long enough to really read anything. Another stalling tactic, Garrett realized. She regarded him closely, noting the dark shadows under his eyes and the deepening hollows of his cheeks.

“You losing weight, Niemeier?”

His head swivelled round and he turned his face up to hers. Deep frown lines stabbed downward from his nose, bracketing his thin lips, paler than usual. The eyes were…not glassy…but certainly not alive either.

“You’re taking a survey?” he asked. His voice was husky with fatigue.

The woman shrugged. She flung the tails of her overcoat behind her and squatted down near him. Now she was looking up into his face. The meager light was better here and she could tell the heavy toll that his newfound sobriety was having upon him.

“You look slimmer is all,” she said, trying hard not to sound too concerned. She knew he hated it. “Are you hitting the precinct gym?”

His gray eyes stared at her for a few hard seconds, cool as a pair of stones in a puddle. She returned his gaze, willing herself not to blink. It had become an unspoken game between the mismatched partners. First one to flinch and all that. She wasn’t going to let him win that easily. Silence stretched out, swelling between them like a bubble, altering the landscape and the gravity of the room and pushing through the doorway into the hall such that the uniform outside the threshold crossed and uncrossed his arms, clearly unsure how to behave around the two homicide detectives.

Correction: the homicide and consulting detective.

Even though the commissioner had convinced Niemeier to come onboard for this case, he still did not reinstate the former detective. He had not even announced it at the press conference, pretending not to hear the flurry of questions about “the Niemeier sightings” at the first crime scenes. As good as Niemeier had been, and still was if you were to believe the stories coming out of Transit about the Callum-Litmanen case, his disgrace was still pungent in many noses. As long as it wasn’t the heavy, smoky stench of the whisky still, Amanda didn’t care. All she worried about, still regarding Niemeier with a cynical eye, was making sure he didn’t play the veteran cop card or use this favour to the commissioner to muscle his way back into the force.

“So how about it, Niemeier?” she asked. A flicker of agitation sparked across his eyes at not hearing capital D detective in front of his name. She kept a smirk under wraps. “You pumping iron? Eating right?”

“Yeah,” he said, exasperation rattling through his voice. “That’s it exactly.” He tore his eyes away from her and glanced down at the sheet covering the body, wagging a finger over it. “Show me what you’ve got here.”

One corner of Amanda’s red lips snagged upward at the point she scored against him, but she was able to hide it as she reached across the body and drew back the sheet.

Niemeier grimaced at what he saw. His eyes rested on the back of the woman’s head where she suffered the majority of her injuries. Dried blood had formed a black stain in the nest of her fine blonde hair where her skull had been crushed by a blunt instrument. Amanda didn’t suppose he saw much of this anymore, working petty crimes in Transit. When the Big Ones happened, he didn’t get called to them anymore.

"This is Pamela Wallace."

"Nice touch with the 'is'.  I like that.  Respectful."

Amanda ignored him and read more of Pamela's vital statistics off the victimology as it scrolled up through her field of vision.

Niemeier interrupted her.  "There was a kid, I heard.  On the way in.  What's his name?"

"A girl.  Rosie."

Niemeier shook his head sadly.  "Cute name.  You get that from the victimology?"

Garrett shook her head.  She stood up, crossed to the window and bent low toward the sill.  She took in a deep breath and, holding back tresses of her curly red hair, blew gently against the window pane.  "rosie" emerged over and over again in a child's unpracticed, lowercase hand.

Niemeier said nothing as he watched the letters vanish along with the condensation.

"One of the CSU pros found it as he scanned for prints."

"Where is she?"

"Outside with an EMT and a Child Services rep."

Garrett pointed out the window.  Niemeier hauled himself to his feet and peered out the window.  A little girl, four, maybe five, was sitting on the rear bumper of the EMT van playing patty-cakes with a middle aged Child Services worker.  She was giggling about something the CS woman had done.  Unbelievable.  Niemeier blew out a sigh and rubbed his face as he headed for the door.

"Rosie," he muttered.  "Shit."

"Where are you going?"  Garrett hurried after him.

"Outside."  Niemeier was shuffling down the stairs by the time Garrett made it into the hallway.  As his head disappeared below the lip of the top step, he muttered away to himself. "Her name had to be 'Rosie'.  Little blonde pigtails.  Probably cute as a button.  Shit."

Sunder: Day 55

Managed to get about 2 hours' work done tonight, but I'm not in my usual spot so I'm a little off my game.  The execs have been having their quarterly strategic review for the last two weeks so that means all-day pow-wows that have extended long into the evening.  Where I would normally set up to write--the spare office reserved for our visiting remote salesmen--has been occupied by the VP of Sales.  I'm stuck in the empty cube one up from my daytime work station.  I am usually ensconsed behind a nice wide desk in a darkened office with a desk lamp burning over the laptop, but tonight I was under garish flourescent office lighting in a creaky old chair that passed its mandatory age of retirement a long time ago.  The only saving grace is that my section of the office was far removed from where all the executive meetings were taking place.

I'm packing it in a bit early tonight because I have long day ahead of me tomorrow and I'll need my energy.

Sunder: Day 54

Opted to write tonight (or, as I described to a friend) muck around in the dirt and the clay.  I had jotted down a bunch of hand written notes the last time I worked on "Sunder" and tonight I worked on transcribing them into the computer and then working and shaping the ideas a little.  It's slow progress, but I feel like I need to take things at this pace for now.  Supporting myself with a full time job does not leave a lot of hours in the day to ply my craft.  Plus I need to eat and sleep...the body's requirements are steep.

More tomorrow.  Hopefully.

Crein

What to do?

My mind is divided: do I write tonight or do I put in some overtime? 

I had a bit of a struggle at the office today with one of NS's processes and after jousting with it all afternoon, I finally managed to pin it down and figure out what was going on.  Turns out that what I thought was a bug probably isn't one after all.  It also turns out that I have been misunderstanding a few facets of a key overdue interest calculation for quite some time and today's exercise helped me to straighten things out once and for all--at least for Overdue Interest Method #2.  (One down, five to go!)

My internal struggle pertains to whether or not I should work on a "cheat sheet" document for myself while this is still fresh in my mind?  I should use tonight for writing, but I would hate to forget something between now and tomorrow morning.  On top of that, I am concerned that the time I spent today on one test will eat into the overall time I have to complete the rest of the baseline testing that R. asked me to do. 

Sunder: Day 53

Another excellent night of writing.  Re-adjusted a few parts of last night's work and drafted some new material.  I'm pretty tired so I'm not going to spend too much time on this entry, only to say that I'm excited about what I accomplished.  Finally getting some traction on this thing.

Sunder: Day 52

After a longer than expected Christmas-slash-New Year's break, I am back at the laptop and writing.  I started last night, actually, but I can't count it since I got absolutely nothing done.  Tonight got off to a slowish start, but the pace picked up considerably once I had a cup of coffee in me and the cleaning crew left the office.  It was a stressful work day so I am grateful for the chance to have produced something somewhere in the orbit of "creative".

I was looking at the notes I made for the first part of Sunder's prologue, but I wasn't satisfied with them at all looking at them next to the second part.  The first segment was just too passive and didn't build any of the mystery surrounding the main characters or any of the major events that start the ball rolling in the first movement so I reworked them and came up with something different.  Definitely an improvement, but I'll have to see how the thing works in the whole before I decide if I'm going to keep it or make further changes.

"You have to write down what you're going to throw away.  You know you have to go through at least ten versions before you can see how it works in the whole." (Leonard Cohen)

It's 11 PM now and I'm tired.  This is enough for one night.