Goat Notes

Due to the severe degeneration of my lifestyle during the final push to complete my first draft, I shall be devoting most of this weekend to clearup and recovery. Last night I got my first really decent sleep in more than a week, so I'll take that as a good beginning. Much or little blogging may fit into the corners.

I was going to illustrate this post, but either Dreamwidth or Picasa has stuffed up most hopelessly, and I can't be bothered to sort it out. Here's a link to the Old Masterpiece that speaks most eloquently to the state of the artist.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 1,460 words, and just got up to the climactic and final bit of the chapter.

Most of this is going to have to go into incluing in previous sections, be moved back into previous episodes, or just deleted and left for implication.  I can't do that in this first draft, or I'll forget half of what I was trying to imply.  The Bonfire Arc is definitely taking a turn I hadn't planned for.  That's new, eh?

Also, my nerves are piano-wires, my muscles feel fresh off the barbecue, and I am mucous as any slug.  There's a simile I shan't be working into any folksongs any time soon!

After a pleasant week of Family Stuff, I returned to work to discover a defrosted freezer.  The contents, which were mostly liver and lights, had reached the stage of sending out miasmas and pseudopods.  The Offaly Civilization has now been destroyed, but long shall its memory be green.  Crimson, purple, billy-brown and black also.

My back is staging demonstrations for shorter weights and better pay.

My home access to LJ seems to have mostly gone away, hanging forever whilst contacting "userapi.com".  Some folk report solving a similar problem by forcing their router to grab them a new dynamic IP address.  Doesn't work for me.

In a more encouraging development, I've finally achieved my perfect sausage risotto - my previous standard being mediocre at best.  The secret, such as it is, involves more chilli and garlic, more carrot and coriander soup, and the introduction of small quantities of olives and tomato salsa.  This advance was achieved by one part instinct, three parts advice, and nine parts blind ridiculous luck.

Aaaand it's time to get writing again.

Suddenly afflicted yesterday with either a significant irritation or a minor infection in my left eye, whereafter not much sitting at computer screens possible. Better today but not yet quite right, so communications may continue economical.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 280 words more of Kate's Speech. How vile is my disposition when the stories are not flowing, and how little I notice until the cloud lifts! I think I usually more or less fake homo sapience socially during lulls like the past week's, even to myself at the time; but the mood's aftertaste is not a lovely one; and as for the effect on the housework, I stepped out this morning to find the silverfish forming a picket line and waving little teeny placards demanding cleaner and tidier working conditions. Or perhaps there was just something in my eye, and I saw what I secretly expected to.

I dreamed a brand new fantasy world and have forgotten almost all of it, except for the map of the region I was in and its near environs. I was on the western side, which was a sort of combination of Dark Lord's Wasteland and 1970s Slump London - more lava lamps than Mount Doom - with various punky subcultures around the fringes. There were various impassable barriers to the happier and more diverse countries to the east, except that they weren't entirely impassable either on the magical barrier end or the big enormous mountain range end, and evil imperial invasion was being plotted going eastwards, as well as serious iffy eastern sorcerous plots whose details I don't remember leaking westwards onto my own side of the barriers. I was involved in some Arab Spring style of sedition against the Lava Lamp Imperials, and either I have forgotten all of the details of that too, or I was just engaging in my usual dream strategy of Victory Through It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.

The little I do remember of its general feel makes me wish I retained enough of the setting to use it for something.  I wonder if it was influenced by thoughts of the late Diana Wynne Jones?  The register seems right.  Ah well, back to my work again!

They don't always get on with one, as I am occasionally reminded.  On a medicine now that will hopefully pacify them.  I see much bland eating and even plainer drinking ahead for... some time.  I suppose small frequent meals does mean more variety, which is spice of a sort.

I slept reasonably last night for the first time in a while, which is probably why I didn't wake up fresh from the memory of roping James Stewart, Cyndi Lauper, Nicholas Nickleby and Campaspe into an amateur Anglesey production of You Won't Believe It!, the smash-hit musical based on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Yet.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 410 words of critically urgent instant diplomacy, and Elegant Elder Sister, who is not the sort of person who speaks much of 'guts' at all, nonetheless turns out to have even more of them than I thought.