I can't eat that many, even if I skip lunch. Too full to move. More last minute plans this weekend so less time to work but it's worth it. I've blocked out times at night to write for the next few months.
Halloween story – due Oct 31st (2k words)
Specfic story – due Nov 1st (2k words)
Deadford Square – due Dec 1st (50k words)
Redbriar 2 – due Jan 1st. (40k words)
Can I do it? Yes. Will I keep to that schedule? Maybe. I have the resources to do so. I'll most likely be working on Redbriar 2 off and on throughout the whole time, but leaving all of November for Deadford Square.
Working on a little story set in Bloomsbury. Yes, yes, I know. Anyway, It's been fun researching actual writers, poets, and artists from there and what huge leverage many of them had that allowed them to live in a cheap section of town while using daddy's money/grandmas inheritance to make art and write. Perfect storm, eh? Similar to reading about the great writers/poets from Greenwich Village in the late 50's and mid 60's that basically didn't need a day job to write.
This is the only way I could really set up characters for this story, they couldn't have day jobs or else they wouldn't have time to be artists/poets/writers. They have to spend all day in their studios, writers sheds, or cafe's drinking and vomiting out great works in ways us in the working classes just couldn't fathom.
It was going to be the base of an RPG set in the 1905-1925 using artistic professions as “classes” and social classes as “races”. So you could roll an “aristocratic writer” or a “lower middle class poet”. Anyway, the “party” would get together at night to do artsy junk or stage a practical joke on the public just to get into the papers. (Dreadnought Hoax)
I don't think this is something that the majority of folks in the RPG community could sit around and casually play without extensive history in this whole point in time so to test out the concept I'm writing out the campaign as a story and just running the characters all myself to see how it could potentially play out. Oh and ghosts or something wild. Roy Campbell will be a villain.
Don't go the day of in November with the rest of the county. Early voting is a thing and it's never been busy the times I went for any election.
A huge fuss has been made over voting by mail which is not a thing the majority of our state is allowed to do. Only the elderly, legally sick/disabled, or people out of state for months at a time qualify for mail-in voting. Some people posted how few mail-in ballot drop off locations there are per county vs the population; only a sliver, a shred, a dusting of that population qualifies to use it in the first place.
Go early instead. Early voting lasts weeks. The hours are nearly the same and the locations are sometimes better.
I made an appt (it's appt only) a few weeks ago to get this DL renewed. They make you go in at ten year intervals I think as opposed to doing it online to update addresses as I always had before. So yeah, imagine the normal DMV wait but with social distancing and capacity limits.
Got there a half hour early, signed in, and stood in line outside with everyone else on our little slices of tape. The line was well out the door and about a dozen folks deep. It took half an hour to get to the middle.
There was a handler at the door making sure folks didn't just walk in and to do check temps. He would come out to the line periodically to ask if anyone didn't have an appointment. Those that didn't were brought inside temporarily to schedule one. A lady in line behind me refused to believe that those people weren't just skipping the line and getting their paperwork done ahead of us. She continued to question him on why those people got to go inside and come right back out. The guy strangely never explained that those people were just making appointments and not getting anything actually done. What was wild was that her loud complaints began to have those behind her also question the line system and why we had to wait as though what she said was even remotely true. They could clearly see, as I could clearly see, that those people were going in and back out in less than two minutes, nowhere near the time it would take to get anything done and with empty hands. It was almost funny to listen to them just parrot her and get upset for no logical reason. I could have said something to her but in my experience engaging in conversation with someone like that is just asking to be chewed out or yelled at.
Once inside I had to fill out a form and sit in one of a half dozen or so chairs spaced out so you don't snot on people. Another half hour.
They gave you a number via txt when you got there. The numbers they called out were seemingly at random with a 34, 97, 102, and a 60. I was finally called over an hour and a half after I arrived at the building.
The whole process took about six minutes and I was out.
Got caught up on some period dramas I had meant to watch months ago but due to These Trying Times® hadn't yet done so.
First up: Little Women
This is the best version of the book so far. At this point you know what is going to happen you know who everyone is etc. You aren't surprised by Beth dying, no, you have to brace for it like the drop in a roller coaster. Because the story is chopped up and out of order it takes you on a ride. You know there are turns and drops and climbs but you don't know when or where they're going to happen. 10/10 will watch again.
Second: Emma
Maybe I shouldn't have watched these back to back but not only is this like watching paint dry it's watching a beautiful pastel oil painting dry. Once again the story is one we all know, even if you've only seen Clueless. Now, the actress playing Emma does a stellar job of being a huge bitch to people. Flawless. She does this so well that by the end it seems there wasn't enough time to make her really redeemable in this when she gets the trophy husband she didn't really want but also kinda did. It felt like the bad guy had won. Miranda Hart is perfect but the whole beast is too big to sit through again. 5/10 might put on the background.
Third: Orlando
So this one is old and I could never find a copy but it's finally on Amazon Prime video. Now, the settings, costumes, actors, etc are all end-game amazing. I can see why the Met gala wanted to use it as a theme. (Pure costume porn.) But, while there is detail for miles it's simply a telling of Orlando as a story and not Orlando as Vita Sackville-West. It was just a series of events over time and place that Orlando gets dragged through as opposed to any internal dialogue which is 90% of a Woolf novel. 6/10 because of Swinton and Billy Zane.
Spent the weekend clearing out and sorting all the boxes of electronics and spare cables I have around my desk/bed/walls. Bought several rubbermaid bins and cleared out the seasonal clothes in the closet and got rid of boxes of stuff in there too. Now there are zero boxes of books/cables/parts anywhere in this room.
So that means I can now write without distraction, right?
Picked up a shirt from their online shop the other day. They closed the downtown location because well, it's downtown and nobody can afford the rent there. Bars are shutting down en masse. Restaurants are allowed to be open to nearly capacity these days but bars still aren't allowed to at all. Wild.
If I didn't know any better I'd point fingers at teetotalers in charge of policy but I don't know if there are any. The restaurants all serve booze and they let folks do to-go alcohol which in our state was once unthinkable.
Easy Tiger's big draw is the baked goods and beer garden type food. You can get a plate of sausage and beer cheese with house pastries. Let's just say the food is just as good as the drinks. There was a small location in a grocery store up north that was fun to swing into for a to-go lunch but that was gutted out when I went last week.
Anyway, I picked up a shirt from their online store since they are down to only a few locations that are nowhere near me now and it's an easy way to support them.
Husband ordered new headlamps for the Jeep, the OG ones from 2004 were already dangerously dim to start with. He managed to get one of them installed a few weeks ago but discovered the second ones housing was broken. A new bracket assembly was ordered and he got too busy with work to get it in. Plus the thing came with no instructions and he had no idea how to replace the old one, YouTube wasn't helping either.
This morning I was scrolling through twitter to check the news. The news no longer causes stress. I feel like I'm probably not the only one who feels numb to things that should cause boiling rage or despair. No, the news no longer does that. What did do it today was some Robert Frost Fanboy shit-talking Emily Dickinson.
There is so much going on to be angry about but no, that was it. That dumb tweet made me irrationally livid for hours. I think the anger I should have felt for what I read in the news got dislocated and fixated on the Dickinson slander. People can debate the news, politics, weather, whatever. You can't debate Dickinson. I think I typed up and deleted about a dozen rage-tweets and thankfully just closed the app afterwards.
After lunch, to clear my head I went out to the garage and installed the new headlight assembly to the Jeep and the new lamp as well within about fifteen minutes. Most of which was spent finding an 8mm socket to remove some nuts. Husband was stoked that I was able to get it done for him.
If someone could tweet some ignorant shit about Woolf I have some other home repairs to rage fix.
Reading through a few shorts. Liking them so far. They say you need to read your genre or read more in general to write well. I figure reading stuff from the late 1800's will help me write stuff set in the same time period. So far I think that's valid advice. Even better advice is to read Chekhov.
Every year I buy a new pair of the same Vans Old Skool shoes, each time a different color but the same size and model. I've had the same winter coat for a decade and it's worn beyond it's ability to keep me warm.
Today a new pair of black boots came in, yesterday my grey wool pea coat arrived, and my first ever proper hat will be here soon. All three of these were made in the USA.
I've always wanted to have made in the USA clothes but they've always been well beyond my price range. Thankfully with our jobs we could afford to start replacing stuff here and there and I opted to update my long-wearing staple clothes – things that won't need to be replaced for a long time. My old doc martens lasted a decade, these Redwings will last even longer according to the folks I've talked to who owned them. No regrets there. The hat is a Stetson and should go well with the lace up boots and long grey coat.
