06/23/00 -- Did I mention critiques?

Nope, not today.

Strange, but true.  We didn't do any critiques today.  Sean left this morning and before that, a handful of us drove over to IHOP for a g'bye breakfast.  Like a good little f'angle, I stopped and made sure Linda and Gavin (the other two driving) knew how to get there.  Then, on the way, managed to pass it and not realize it.  Sean, Jennifer, Kelly and I were talking.  I wasn't awake.  We got almost to Meijer's when I realized something wasn't quite right.  We should've seen IHOP long before we saw Meijer's.

Oh, well.  So I felt like an idiot.  Or, rather, did when I was awake enough to feel like one.  Alarm went off at 7:30 this morning.  I had every intention of getting up when the alarm went off until it actually did.  I felt like crap and reset the alarm for 8:30.

It's getting harder and harder to wake up in the mornings.  I think I've done too many nights in a row of 5 (or fewer) hours of sleep and it's catching up to me.  I still feel like there aren't enough hours in the day, though, to get enough sleep.  It's frustrating.

Yep.. I would've liked this week to last a little bit longer.  Sean had so many cool things to say and I would've liked to hear more ... more tips, more advice, more funny stories. :)

Tananarive Due shows up tomorrow evening, so I'm looking forward to see what she'll have to say.  Monday'll see "Mockingbird Girl" critiqued, too.  Nervously looking forward to that.

After breakfast, I dorked around a bit with possible t-shirt designs/layouts.  I may need to revise my idea for design if I can't get the artwork done right, but I think I still have a couple or three weeks to do it.  Maybe.  Gonna have to find out on Monday or Tuesday.

Mark came up and asked me to let him know if I was going to go on a Meijer's run or anything later... So I wound up giving in to the need to procrastinate and he and I went and had lunch at Chili's then went to Meijer's.  The waitress at Chili's was weird.  She said okay! at the end of everything, like she was really excited about whatever we just said or whatever she just said.  Just kinda weird.  Mark's talent for having things take .... inordinately long ... in a restaurant kicked in again.

And then again at dinner when he, Linda, Jennifer and I braved the Rio Something-or-another for "Fresh Mex".  It was like a Chevy's ... only the food wasn't as good.  And I don't think they had chocolate sopapillas.

Another run to Meijer's on the way back from that.  I broke down and bought the WCW magazine with Scott Steiner on the cover.  Hadda show Jen pictures of him.  *snrk*

Oh.  I wrote a little, too.  A very little.  Wrote the start of my first person story by hand.  Nice whole page of my little tiny handwriting.  I sat down to type it into the computer and changed everything as I did.  *sigh*  I'm not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign, but I feel like I wasted two hours this afternoon scribbling by hand. :/

I've also managed to pull/pinch/tweak/something my back today.  I'm all knots from my waist down on either side of my spine.  I'd've had a Midori Melon margarita at dinner if I hadn't had ibuprofen right before we left to go over there ... and planned to have more when I got back to my room.  Ugh.  Which means, because I was hurting, I skipped out on the Green Door trip (blues/jazz music place and dancing).  Maybe folks'll go again next weekend or something.

I should try to go to bed early tonight.  I think I'm not going to turn my alarm on in the morning, however.  Barbeque is tomorrow night.  I don't have to be there until, like, 8pm.  I doubt I'll sleep all day, but I may sleep for quite a bit of it. :/  If I don't have a story to turn in Monday morning, then I don't.  I've already got one in the backlog (what we've begun to lovingly refer to as our slush pile).  It'll just add another one that likely won't be gotten to this week.

Still feeling a little competitive, though.  Not really with anyone else (though there is a little bit of that), but more with myself.  I want to write at least one story every week. I've done four.  I don't want to sit here and say, Gee, I've got four done.  I don't have to write anything until week five.  I can just slack off for two weeks.  I'm too prone to laziness, to putting things off if I have an excuse.  I don't want to use the backlog of stories that may or may not wind up critiqued if everyone keeps up at this breakneck pace as an excuse not to write anything else, as an excuse not to keep pushing myself to try different things, to expand, to ... to whatever.

I think I'm going to have to write an SF story while I'm here.  But I may not make it my next one.  After two challenges in a row (well, three if I count "Mockingbird Girl" on top of "Poor as Paupers..." and the one I'm working on now) I think I want to write something that isn't as much of a struggle for every word.  Something that I'm not going to actively hate while I'm writing it.  I guess I'll leave the SF for Delany's week or something.  For next weekend.  I'll haul my butt over to the library and find out something biology-esque.  I'm more inclined to write something in a field for which I have some small amount of grounding.  That biology not-quite-major may do me some good for my writing, yet!

Much as my first person narrative is frustrating me, it did give me an excuse to buy some good books this afternoon (between Mejier's and back to campus first time around, Mark and I stopped at Schuller's -- the bookstore right by Mejier's).  I grabbed a collection of Connie Willis' short stories.  Mark had read it and told me that a bunch of them were first person.  I grabbed one of the adult fairytale anthologies that Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling edit, too.  The alien sex stories was just because.  And Sean Stewart's The Night Watch was because it's out of stock for most distributors and that means it may be slowly on its way to out of print.  I saw it and grabbed it before Mark could.

Now I just have to figure out if I have time to read some of those first person shorts before I turn in this thing I'm working on.  I'm thinking I'll get a first draft of it done and then read one of them and see what mine is lacking based on that.  Or at least try to see what mine is lacking.

 

Okay, so other folks are talking about their productivity here.  I decided I may as well, too. This list (and my productivity) is subject to change without notice. :)
Title	Word Count	Finished	Critiqued?
"Where the Blood Roses Grow" Week one, first story.  Wahoo.  And I was worried that something wouldn't come.	5000	6/13	6/15
"Uprooting the Tree" Will probably change the title at some point.	3400	6/16	6/19
"Mockingbird Girl" I think I'm happiest with this story, so far.	2800	6/19
"Poor as Paupers, Rich as Royalty" My challenge story from Sean's week.  I hated writing it.  It gave me a toothache.	2000	6/22
That fucking first person narrative (not yet complete)	(400)