Drag me to death like a lit cigarette
Mar. 9th, 2020 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cheriepriestHey look, I’m still alive! I’m also in Seattle, where I live, and where I’m washing my hands a lot + staying close to home on principle. As you know, Bob - coronavirus is making the rounds. Locals are rallying to the occasion (since the feds aren’t), tests are being hacked together by UW’s medical center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is throwing money into developing home tests, and there’s no hand sanitizer or Lysol to be found in the greater King County area. You can’t even order it on Amazon, which is surely a sign of the apocalypse.
Eh. Soap works better anyway.
On the upshot, our governor isn’t an idiot - and thanks to him, anyone can get a free test (as production ramps up) without insurance, health care workers are getting paid even if they have to bop off to quarantine, and the area’s major corporations are letting people work from home. Microsoft is even continuing to pay its hourly workers, so they don’t have to come in sick. As far as billionaires go, you can do worse than Gates, I guess.
Meanwhile, for those of us who are in generally good health, life goes on. The dogs are well, the cat is fine, my husband is working from home when he’s able, and we are all stocked up on all the important stuff. (Booze, weed, pet food. The essentials.)
And as for me, I’m getting back to work.
So here's recent progress on my modern gothic ghost story about the fallout from a school shooting 25 years ago, told from the POV of four survivors - with Bonus! memories both faulty and true, intergenerational violence and grace alike, and a boarded up school with thirty-two ghosts who know something the police never figured out. This bad-boy is one part The Haunting of Hill House, one part The Frighteners, and one part Bowling for Columbine. Wish me luck.
Project: Kill Me Now
Deadline: none ::throws confetti::
New words written: 22,356
Present total word count: 62,357
Things accomplished in real life: [In the last oh month or two.] Started clearing out the yard from the winter mud and mildew; binged I Am Not Okay With this, 2/3 of Letterkenny, part of Hunters, first half of the new season of Castlevania; hung out with friends for a big-screen pay-per-view showing of a wrestling match; got lunch with a friend in the U-district; had a great week-long visit from dad and stepmom; had Fun With Taxes; and I’m probably forgetting a million other things, but that’ll teach me to go so long between blog posts I guess.
Things accomplished in fiction: Got all but two of my main characters successfully into the haunted old school and the shit has hit the fan, hurrah!
Other: Writing this one is… different, for me. I’m usually not much of a plotter and more of a straightforward A-Z pantser, but this one is complex and I’m not writing it all in order. Most of the first third will be written last. It feels weird, but it’s what needs to happen and I didn’t figure it out in time to do this one in a linear fashion.
Other, redux: So far, 2020 has been… generally good, but a bit packed. Besides everything mentioned above, there have been pet shenanigans - Lucy broke a second tooth and they both had to come out; her recovery was not speedy and it was a bit fraught for everyone, not least of all Greyson and Quinnie. Also, I did some volunteer writer-visit stuff with a local juvenile detention facility; I did ConFusion in January and it was the BEST; I went through several rounds of revisions on a project with my awesome new agent, and now I’m out on submission again for the first time (more or less) since 2012; and so forth, and so on. Anyway, I have not done as much non-revision writing this year as I would have preferred, but I am getting back in the saddle now ::thumbs up::
Approximate number of fiction words so far this year: Let’s say 20,000 because it’s probably pretty close, tbh.
Anyway, thanks for reading, everybody. I’ll try to blog more regularly henceforth, by way of posting word metrics, if nothing else. It reminds me that I’m making progress, even when it feels like I’m not.
Eh. Soap works better anyway.
On the upshot, our governor isn’t an idiot - and thanks to him, anyone can get a free test (as production ramps up) without insurance, health care workers are getting paid even if they have to bop off to quarantine, and the area’s major corporations are letting people work from home. Microsoft is even continuing to pay its hourly workers, so they don’t have to come in sick. As far as billionaires go, you can do worse than Gates, I guess.
Meanwhile, for those of us who are in generally good health, life goes on. The dogs are well, the cat is fine, my husband is working from home when he’s able, and we are all stocked up on all the important stuff. (Booze, weed, pet food. The essentials.)
And as for me, I’m getting back to work.
So here's recent progress on my modern gothic ghost story about the fallout from a school shooting 25 years ago, told from the POV of four survivors - with Bonus! memories both faulty and true, intergenerational violence and grace alike, and a boarded up school with thirty-two ghosts who know something the police never figured out. This bad-boy is one part The Haunting of Hill House, one part The Frighteners, and one part Bowling for Columbine. Wish me luck.
Project: Kill Me Now
Deadline: none ::throws confetti::
New words written: 22,356
Present total word count: 62,357
Things accomplished in real life: [In the last oh month or two.] Started clearing out the yard from the winter mud and mildew; binged I Am Not Okay With this, 2/3 of Letterkenny, part of Hunters, first half of the new season of Castlevania; hung out with friends for a big-screen pay-per-view showing of a wrestling match; got lunch with a friend in the U-district; had a great week-long visit from dad and stepmom; had Fun With Taxes; and I’m probably forgetting a million other things, but that’ll teach me to go so long between blog posts I guess.
Things accomplished in fiction: Got all but two of my main characters successfully into the haunted old school and the shit has hit the fan, hurrah!
Other: Writing this one is… different, for me. I’m usually not much of a plotter and more of a straightforward A-Z pantser, but this one is complex and I’m not writing it all in order. Most of the first third will be written last. It feels weird, but it’s what needs to happen and I didn’t figure it out in time to do this one in a linear fashion.
Other, redux: So far, 2020 has been… generally good, but a bit packed. Besides everything mentioned above, there have been pet shenanigans - Lucy broke a second tooth and they both had to come out; her recovery was not speedy and it was a bit fraught for everyone, not least of all Greyson and Quinnie. Also, I did some volunteer writer-visit stuff with a local juvenile detention facility; I did ConFusion in January and it was the BEST; I went through several rounds of revisions on a project with my awesome new agent, and now I’m out on submission again for the first time (more or less) since 2012; and so forth, and so on. Anyway, I have not done as much non-revision writing this year as I would have preferred, but I am getting back in the saddle now ::thumbs up::
Approximate number of fiction words so far this year: Let’s say 20,000 because it’s probably pretty close, tbh.
Anyway, thanks for reading, everybody. I’ll try to blog more regularly henceforth, by way of posting word metrics, if nothing else. It reminds me that I’m making progress, even when it feels like I’m not.