Saturday morning, with coffee

[ksmith]

And I now have new A/C. The guy installed it yesterday as I holed up in the home office with the pups and did day job stuff. Funny how confining a room can feel when you can't leave.

Of course, once I was in there for a bit, I figured out how to pen the kids in with King's Very Large Bed so I could open the door without them squirting out.

It's nice to have a brand new system, but I still would have preferred to spend the money on something else.

I have until the end of the month to write a short story. It seems like plenty of time to some of you, I'm sure, but I don't have an idea nudging me so I feel a bit of a blank. I dug through some old, old files for ideas that I sketched out years ago. I will dig through the old file cabinet later and pick through the handwritten notes. No theme to this antho, so sky's the limit. And no guarantee of acceptance, so no details yet.

I envy people who can pull together a tale in a couple of days, I really do. So many of my ideas take soooo damn long to gestate.

In other news, after two lovely days of warmth, the temps plummeted. It's now in the 50s, with clouds and occasional sprinkles. Farther west, they're getting pounded with rain, but everything headed toward my neck of the woods breaks up before it reaches me. So, stuck with the chill and the wind and nothing to show for it.

In gardening news, the lettuces are sprouting in the raised bed, and I think I spotted the broccoli raab as well. I'm glad I packed mulch around the tomatoes and peppers--I think it's sheltering them from the chill. The basil are sprouting in the deck pots, and I bought a couple of hanging flower baskets to brighten things up. Yellow petunias and yellow and orange gerbera daisies dahlias. I hope they survive the chill.

And now, off to the grocer store.

Comments

[marthawells.livejournal.com]

I'm the same way with short stories -- it can take me a month to two months to do one.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

It's crazy. I tell myself, "it's 20 pages--that's a chapter. you can write 20 pages in a day." Except it's not the same thing.

I can pick over an opening line for a week.

There's so much less room to maneuver.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

"Funny how confining a room can feel when you can't leave."

That was pretty much R-'s attitude toward his hospital room.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Because you can't move, and all you can think about are all the things you wish you had with you, from food to books to just plain stuff.

[seachanges.livejournal.com]

I work at a positively glacial pace when I'm first starting a piece. I'm also a linear writer, and can't write scenes out of order. I have to start at the beginning and plow my way through to the end. With "Memento Mori" it took me two months to get the first 1,500 words out, but once I'd gotten past that bottleneck, it took a whopping three days to finish it.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

::icon love:: Only substitute Freecell for Solitaire.

Those first lines kill me. The first paragraph. I always seem to start with dialogue, for some reason. No riveting legendary lines like "The door dilated."