sylvia_bond | Entries tagged with novel notes

So, on November 24 of this year, I unplugged my cable. And how’s it going, you ask?

I’m still struggling with not being able to just sit down and find something mindless to watch, but, I think the end results will be worth it. While I miss the History Channel like crazy, I do not miss the reality shows that were getting stupider and stupider. The Amazing Race seemed like it might be fun, but really. I get enough of that kind of reality when I’m late for a plane. Sometimes I do sit down, and spin through my ginormous collection of about, oh 15 selections, and YES, sometimes I’ll watch something for five minutes before realizing I have no idea what it is or what it’s about. And then I’ll turn the TV off. It’s a hard habit to break.

Here’s what I’ve found that’s cool though. Last Sunday, I cooked. Now, I do that a lot acutally, cook on Sunday to make rice and stuff for the rest of the week, but normally, I’m thinking, well, I’ll get down to the TV (which is in the basement) and get all ready and…and then I remember. I’m on MY schedule now. I don’t have to rush. I’ve got tons of DVDs and movies I can instantly watch on Netflix. I have books to read - I’m way over my head with stuff I can do, without having to race to match the network’s schedule. Isn’t that nice?

I go to bed now when I’m tired and when it’s time, NOT when the show is over.

I’ve stopped looking at the clock while writing because it doesn’t matter what time it is.

I’ve cleaned out three closets (yes, three) with the extra time I’ve found.

I wrote an article reviewing The Watchmen comic book/graphic novel, and was finally able to finish it up. I’ve started a new project about fanfic and fanwriters for PRG. I’m trying to determine whether I want to focus on a) writing more fanfic, b) writing more articles, c) writing on that novel of mine, d) making songvids. I’m pretty sure that I’d have time for ALL of these if I was more disciplined with my time.

I barely look at the TV anymore. I’m sure it feels lonely.

So there I was, one day last week (not Thursday), goofing around. I was on the couch, clicker in hand, surfing, desperately surfing for something to distract me. The TV offered up nothing, and an hour later, I found myself watching commercials. I checked the clock. It was 8:30, and I’d accomplished nothing. Done nothing, cleaned nothing, organized nothing, and most important of all, written nothing.

What a waste.
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Last Saturday was the day. I promised myself all week that Saturday was the day…and it was. I’d managed to keep the WHOLE of Saturday free and got some new college-lined paper, made sure I had my special pen (a $25 Watermen fountain pen), my clipboard, a printout of the pages I’ve produced thus far, my almost intelligible notes, and away I went to Amante’s. In the rain.

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So I’m having a rough week, considering my temp job, in which I do secretarial type stuff for a smudgy little man who cozies up to his superiors while stopping to take time to throw everyone who works for him under the bus when the opportunity arrives. It’s like waiting for not one shoe to drop, but a whole boxful. (Or for them to get thrown at you as you slip screaming under the black wheels of the RTD #205.)

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So I’m at work, right. It’s a so so job where I’m more secretary than anything, and god bless secretaries and all the work they do, but I can’t stand it. Moreover, I’m horrible at it, because I don’t like the feeling of being at the boss’s beck and call. I’m a tech writer damnit, and I am used to being considered professional and mature enough to determine my own daily schedule. At any rate, that’s not as important as the talk I had with a coworker, a wonderful and talented woman who is also underpaid and underutilized.

During the conversation, I was telling her about my SPN articles, and how much I enjoyed them, how much I enjoyed talking with fans about them. Then she goes, what about that novel? I said what? (On account of I never remembered telling her.) And she said, two weeks ago you were talking about redoing the outline for that, what happened to the outline, did you work on it? Well, I lied and said that yes I had even though, no I hadn’t, because while I really appreciated her interest and her asking, I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I’d actually not working on it at all - that I’d taken a Saturday afternoon to read through it, but lazily did no acutal work. (I was at my favorite coffee shop, Amantes, on north Broadway.)

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So I went to Cafe Sol in Boulder, expecting better than what I got. I’m not saying the coffee wasn’t good because it was, though the poppy seed cake had a hair in it. They served my coffe in a nice cup and saucer, and then splooshed the coffee everywhere. The seats were too low to the tables, and the tables were pushed up at the edges of the room, which was on the chilly side, and while I'm all into casual and everything, the place was rather rundown. Sadly.

Plus, the conversations were BOR-ing.

There were two women to the left of me. One of them was getting signed up for Share A Car or something, where you buy a part of a car, or lease it or something, kind of like renting on a permanent basis. I think the principle is so that you can have a car when you need it. The rules to doing this went on forever, her voice had kind of a whine to it, and I couldn't hardly think around it.

The two women on the right of me bitched on and on about how the coffee shop overcharged them. Turned out there was a ghostly charge for some juice on their receipt, and the coffee shop happily gave them their money back. Yes, cash instead of putting the charge back on their card, and oh, how they moaned about that!

I couldn’t write a thing. It was not a good atmosphere. The Cafe Sol was a bust, sadly. However, now jacked up on caffine, I came home and wrote out my outline for my SPN big bang challenge, which I also signed up for.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Home

So yesterday, I blitzed on the job hunting, and went downtown Boulder to check out a place I'd applied for. Pretty cool building, so I'd be happy with that job. Then I wandered down the street to a local coffee shop there. Amante's Cafe or something. It was snowing, so it was a very artistic walk. The coffee shop was a bustling little bistro with English soccer on the TV and a loud Welsh announcer, so not the ideal place to "linger and chat" as the advert advised. So I couldn't really write write, although the two gents sitting next to me were having a very INTERESTING conversation about power games and mind control (he had a freakish boss, apparently) and how he'd just lost his job that day, and how he was kind of glad to be out of that abusive relationship, where it had gotten to the point where every time he met or saw his boss his whole body would tighten up and he would start shaking.

I'm taking notes like mad, right? It's good stuff, to hear it come out of someone's mouth like this. Might be good if I needed notes on a story about mind games. Then his friend asked him, why didn't you leave earlier than this? Why didn't you speak up? So the guy goes, get this, "I've always been rather negative about those stories where I hear of abused women, wives, you know, who are in a relationship where the guy beats them, her husband, and I'm like, leave, woman, what's your problem? Just leave. Until now. Now I understand why they can't leave, they can't speak up. They blame themselves. They're ashamed. Like I blamed myself. I was like, you start blaming yourself. How do I fix this? You start having a certain kind of response. His mere presence set me off. I never understood it. As for talking about it? Forget it. I felt...stupid for being that scared. Now I know."

Can you imagine having that kind of revelation?

PS The coffee was great and so was the chocolate croissant

So I tried a little experiement. I call it the Coffee Shop experiment. In it, I go to a coffee shop to write. It's gotta be a local one, not a chain, and it should have good solid tables for all the words I'm going to be creating on it. I acutually did this yesterday, but I'm posting the word count today, just to keep track. I went to a place I think is called Ziggi's but don't quote me on that one. I did not bring my laptop, even though they have wifi, instead I brought a fountain pen and a stack of paper. Romantic, right? The ink didn't get everywhere like it sometimes does, but my hand sure ached. I'm more used to writing on the computer these days.

So I didn't write a lot, only 821 words, none of them blistering, but I did write. Since I did job hunting stuff this morning, and blitzed on that, tomorrow I'll go to the coffee shop again and try it out. Again. This time I'll bring my character list, because, crap, I forgot their names. These are secondary characters and I think they are pissed at me for not really knowing who they are because they are all blending together in one pasty faced lump.

Current Mood: crazy
Current Location: Home
Current Music: Billy Joel

So today, I did what I said I was going to do. I worked on my novel. I wrote a blisteringly 731 words, in about an hour. I just connected one scene to the next is all, but at least it was a STEP. In the right direction. I’m going for a walk now, feeling very proud of myself.

The novel has nothing to do with fandom, and is a historical drama set in Victorian London. I’ve always been obsessed with that era, with the repression that sat right underneath the holier-than-the-poor-unwashed folk, and the filth and the general hubbub. You go to London today, and you see smatterings of it, the class separation which seems to be still going on strong. So the story is about that a bit, and the filth, and the shoes. I’m obsessed with Victorian footwear, go figure.

Anyway, 731 words. Horray for me! (To date, the story already has 100,000 words, so I’m looking to double that for the rough draft.)