Katherine Mankiller

*throws confetti*

I just finished the first draft of Lizardfic. Hooray!

It's hard SF (biology). I have no idea if Analog wants it. They might.

I still need to flesh out the protagonist's emotional arc and the like, but the first draft is done. It was like grinding out concrete, so I'm relieved. And pleased, although I think I need to relax and take a few days away from it--maybe work on the script--before any attempt to revise further.

Were it not for things like the evil of DST, I'd have a celebratory beer. *shakes fist at DST*

Script update

I'm now working completely out of sequence on "Double Feature." I wrote in the major beats of the end, because they were clear in my mind. I also tweaked the beginning to lay the foundation for the climax.

I think the beginning is pretty much done, by the way.

Next, I think, is the major beats of the middle. Just the high points. I can fill in the rest later.

It's almost an outline: Write the bones first.

Random cool link: Jessica Bendinger on How I Write, via the Austin Film Festival blog. (Jane Espenson has great writing stuff, too.)

*yawn*

I'm so tired I keep opening the word document with my story in it, staring at it, and closing it again. I think maybe I should just go with it and go to bed early. After all, I was sick last week, and maybe Daylight Savings Time wasn't the best time to give up caffeine. Although I think the flat on my back for a week is a bigger issue than the lack of caffeine. Urgh.

Website Tweak

I updated the Bibliography page to make it shinier. Now with scripts and excerpts/loglines!

Of course, making it display all purty and still validate over at W3.org was exciting. I'm still not sure I like the italics, but I want to offset the excerpts from the regular text, and smaller text was just too small. Everything else I think of strikes me as gauche. I'll ponder it further.

Progress

I'm doing revisions on Lizardfic right now.

Back in November, I posted that I thought the universe in this story was underdeveloped. Well, I'm starting to really feel like that's no longer the case. I'm starting to feel like there could be a theme anthology in the Lizardfic universe. Which, you know, is different from anyone wanting to do such a thing, of course.

I could be wrong, of course. We'll see what the next batch of critiquers have to say. As soon as I finish these revisions.

I need help.

I was stressed out after work last night, so I decided to unwind by converting my site from XHTML Traditional to XHTML Strict. *facepalm*

The most obnoxious part was going back and finding invalid markup in old entries and changing it. I think I've found it all. I even found a popup window I'd failed to spork--horrors! Die, popups, die!

I'm such a nerd.

And I really should have been working on my script.

There was indeed script last night.

I have thirty script pages.

Looking at the date, I need to write two pages a day to finish in time for the early Austin deadline. That sounds super-doable to me. In fact, I think I'll see what I can do this weekend in the way of putting a serious dent in this project.

In other news, I had a stressful week. Misbehaving hardware and the like. Allow me to say, "TGIF."

This is me, working on my script.

No, really! You believe me, don't you?

Yeah, well. Maybe you shouldn't.

I'm tired, and stressed out, and have a headache, and, you know, insert a million more excuses to not write here.

I'm doing better with exercise, but exercise is easier than writing. Programming is easier than writing. I can write fairly difficult programs half-asleep, but I have to be awake and alert to write. Installing linux is easier than writing. It's just so tempting to unwind a bit by doing all these easier things instead of writing. But no, I have a script to write, and as soon as I stop whining I'll go do that. ;)

Okay. Three pages. If I'm really good, maybe I should treat myself after by installing linux on some of the spare hard drive space on my laptop.

Things I need to do today.

Things I need to do today:

• Critters critique.
• Work on script.

Things I should probably do, but suspect I won't:

• The dishes.
• Laundry.

Things I probably shouldn't do, but suspect I will:

• Go to Harry's and grab some vegetarian sushi for lunch. Current excuse: Boyfriend sacked out on couch. You wouldn't want me to wake him up with the microwave, would you?

Sink Archeology

I just loaded every dish that ever existed into my dishwasher and ran it.

No, really. Every dish. Ever. We broke into the neighbors' houses and used their dishes and piled them up in our sink. Big medieval stoneware jugs, Greek and Roman pottery, 8,000 year old Babylonian dishes... all of them were in our sink, and all of them are in the dishwasher. (Yes, it's a big dishwasher.)

Do you think Minoan slipware is dishwasher safe?

The evil middles.

I seem to have a bad case of script middle blues. I'm left trying to figure out what else I can do to these poor characters. On the up side, I'm on page 48, so I'm well into it. I just need more. More more more.

A lightning strike appears to have taken out the cable modem, TV, DVD player, etc. I suggested, in a fit of reductivism, that we should just not have a TV and get cheap DSL and watch DVDs and Galactica on our laptops. Brian doesn't like that idea. Granted, it doesn't solve the new Doctor Who problem (we could get Galactica through iTunes), but TVs are expensive. My next suggestion of a cheap, tiny TV was met with horror and despair.

We'll figure something out.

Script progress

Twelve pages today, which just about makes up for all the slacking I did this last week. That puts me at sixty pages. Estimating a minimum length of ninety pages, that means I'm 66.7% through.

Getting some good advice helped. I may tweak on that 60 pages later.

I had one of those word meter things here for about two minutes. Not only are they not valid XHTML strict, they come out mangled on the page. Probably because they're not valid XHTML strict. ;)

Half a page.

That's how much script I wrote last night. I'm torn between, "Oh, that's pathetic!" and "Well, at least I wrote."

The answer is to let it go and write tonight. Like any other extended effort (diet, exercise, etc.), you can't let a setback be an excuse to quit. Forgiveness has to be part of any large project. Not in the sense of "Oh, I'm tired, I quit," but in the sense of letting it go and getting back to work if you don't do what you think you should have done.

And now, I should shut up and go do my actual job or something. ;)

Things I need to do this weekend.

Things I need to do this weekend:

• Work on script.
• Critters critique.
• Work on script some more.
• Buy groceries.
• Pay bills.
• Register for Dragoncon and Ann Crispin writing workshop.
• Work on script even more.
• Mow lawn.

Thing I might do for fun this weekend:

• Buy yarn for Navajo Loom.