Robynettely

Wind/Water/Salt:  Sometimes it's afternoon and I think to myself, "well, I guess I should work on my novel now" and then I think "or I could just apply for a job." Because writing cover letters is less arduous than trying to fix this mess.  Chapters 26-27, 29-40: Need to take up comments and revise.   Chapter 41-42: Finished and posted. I was sort of stuck on Chapter 42 and tried to skip ahead to chapter 43, but it didn't work. Without motivating the different characters to do whatever they were doing, I couldn't figure anything out. So I went back. And forward. And back again.  Chapter 43-45 (of 48): Read and revised. Persephone (probably not its real name):  Opened the file, added a few words here and there.  Short Story:  Finally finished one (i.e., polished). Made the first draft of another, edited a third.  Critted 14    Got back   11 Submitted 1  Out there 0  Rejects 1  Knitting Tee (me). Started the...

"Crooked Kingdom" by Leigh Bardugo.   I read book 1 in September, and it took this long for Book 2 to arrive. It was a race between hard and e-copies, and they kind of tied. I guess that means the system is working correctly?  There were tons of flashbacks, and they were awesome. So whatever people say about "don't do flashbacks" is BS. Also, tons of past perfect tense because of the flashbacks. On OWW I'm constantly suggesting PP tense to people.  The other lesson here is characters are their relationships. The six are all such flawed people, but such interesting relationships. If I had to kill anyone, I... oh.    LHC #101: "The Song of All" by Tina LeCount Myers. I probably requested this one because of something about Finland. Not available on Overdrive, so I read it in hard copy. I... found it a little slow. I wanted more detail especially in the worldbuilding, and sometimes I was confused about which character was which.  LHC #102: "Borde...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 25/28:  Took up.   Chapters 26, 27, 29 - 38:  Need to be taken up.    Chapter 39 - 40:  Finished and posted.  Chapter 41 - 44 (of 48):  Read and revised.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  I had a scene I wanted to write, and I needed to know where it fell in my chronology, so I dated a whole bunch of scenes. I also drew a setting.  Short Story Started one, worked on another.  Connecting Critted  12  Got back 9      Subs  0  Out there  0  Rejects   1 Knitting Masquerade (Louisa Harding).  Dealt with about 400 loose ends and blocked. Took the whole month. Tee (me).  It's a classic with set in sleeves, knit top down out of sock yarn. Last month I put this in time-out because I needed to rip back to just below the neckline (front) because the sleeve short rows weren't beautiful. I did the ripping out and started back, but didn't get far, bec...

LHC #98: "Jade City" by Fonda Lee.  I loved this book, but I worry I'm never going to know what was in that letter from Enyi that Lan put in his desk for later.  "Exit Strategy" by Martha Wells.   In the library race between eBook and hard copy, this time hard copy won.  "Akira Book 6" by Katsuhiro Otomo. Finished the series! Worth the effort even if I didn't completely understand it.  LHC #99: "Alice Payne Arrives" by Kate Heartfield. Long ago when I put this on my list I sent a note to the library letting them know the title had a typo.  "Alice Payne Rides" by Kate Heartfield. I might have gotten this one out because I didn't quite understand the ending of the previous. And the first one was such a quick read, so the time cost is low. I feel like these two could have been one book and it would have made more sense.  "Wear, Repair, Repurpose" by Lily Fulop. A little more basic than I wanted and not nearly long e...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 25  - 36:  Need to be taken up.    Chapter 37 - 38:  Finished and posted.  Chapter 39 - 41:  Read and revised.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  Became suddenly unstuck around labor day not because I read a pandemic story or anything (though I did that) but because I was thinking about mobsters and psychopomps of all things.  Short Story The one that I worked so hard on last month, I set it aside for maybe 10 days to rethink its life, and since it wasn't quite working anyway I chose a different market with a different theme and a slightly longer target length. Then I smashed it until it met the story criteria for that market, and now it was 1750 words over length for that market too! So I took out 840 words then tried to make its character have growth. Now I think as a story it works.  Added last month's short to that list of things worth finishing.  Connecting Critted  15 It all went wrong ...

  "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" by Cory Doctorow.  This is very relevant to a lot of the jobs I apply for these days. Basically, interoperability! Anti-trust!  "Rogue Protocol" by Martha Wells.  I wasn't done with book 2 (last month) when I requested this one on Overdrive. The wait purported to be 16 weeks. So I requested the hard copy too, and made it a race. The hard copy won.  LHC #95: "Things we lost in the fire: Stories" by Mariana Enriquez. Probably another in the "girls behaving badly" genre I seem to have been mad about in Jan of 2019. Except it's from Argentina and translated into English, so not the same at all. Really good. I need to read more lit in translation, and also maybe I would love to know a language well enough to translate out of it.  LHC #96: "An Ocean of Minutes" by Thea Lim. It's a pandemic story that I requested back in Jan of 2019, when I didn't know how much fun pandemics were. I ...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 23 - 24: Took up.   Chapters 25 - 34:  Need to be taken up.    Chapter 35 - 36:  Finished and posted.  Chapter 37 - 41:  Read and revised.   Persephone (probably not its real name)   Wrote part of a back story short story for it.  Short Story There's a little list of stories to finish pinned on my wall. I chose one, chose a market, read the story, and decided I could totally take 600 words out of this for it to fit into that market. Then I decided to clarify the setting, and this added 400 words. The main character needed a personality; adding this didn't actually make the thing longer. I looked at the original market again and realized it wanted 500 words less than I was aiming for. So now I'm 1500 over.  And I wrote a 2000-word thing that I haven't looked at since that I think is awesome, but it might be half-baked, who knows.  Connecting Critted  16 (probably more sustainable than last month...

"Artificial Condition" by Martha Wells.  The first Murderbot book was so awesome I immediately requested book 2, but it was a month's wait? The next one says 16 weeks, and I've ordered it already. I read a review of one of these that called Murderbot "He" throughout, and I found this shocking.  LHC #89: "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank. I had a phase where I requested a bunch of short story collections about young women behaving badly. This is one of those. Somehow I hadn't realized it was linked stories until after the third one, and then the fourth one was only barely connected, which was weird.  LHC #90: "Half-Witch" by John Schoffstall.  I would have requested this one because of its awesome name. It was also only available in paper. Weird? I guess that's because it's a middle-grade novel (somehow I didn't realize this until I was a few chapters in) and middle graders don't have eReader...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 23 - 30: Need to be taken up.    Chapter 31 - 34: Finished and posted (in two batches).  Chapter 35 - 37: I had read last month. This month I broke two of these chapters in half, making things I currently call 40.1 and 40.2. But I might get rid of 35, so everything could shift up?  Chapter 38 - 41: Read all but 41 a couple of times, smoothed things out, aligned them with the way things currently unfold.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  2K words.  Short Story I wrote a few drafts of a steampunk story back in 2016, but then I became uncomfortable with where I had taken it and put it away. Then last month I read "Who was changed and who was dead" by Barbara Comyns, which had a lot of head-hopping. And I decided I wanted to head-hop a story. There was a really good reason to head-hop in this steampunk story, so I started another draft. I also thought about other ones. Not really productive, though.   Connecting...

"Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness" by Susannah Cahalan. Recommended by my sister. I accidentally got the audio book out of the library.  "Mozart's Starling" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Terry Windling recommended this one on her blog. I really appreciated the end notes being properly linked for a change. My favorite starling fact I learned is that the reason my dad (who owned a small plane) passionately hated starlings was because a flock of them had taken down an aircraft at Logan in 1960.  LHC #85: "Your duck is my duck" by Deborah Eisenberg. Short stories, much more about character than plot. Really rich. I should read more of her.  LHC #86: "Music, sense and nonsense: collected essays and lectures" by Alfred Brendel. Physical library book! I know nothing about piano and a lot of this was over my head so I had to make a schedule in order to finish it.  I used Spotify to play him while I listened, which maybe helped? I don't know.  Canad...

LHC #80: "All Systems Red" by Martha Wells. Such voice! I devoured it and requested the next one in the series. LHC #81: "On Immunity: An Innoculation" by Eula Biss. Recommended by someone in my karate class, possibly when I mentioned my obsession with pandemics and vaccine resistance etc. like a year and a half ago. One thing that drives me a little bit mad when reading eBooks is they make so little effort to link the endnotes to the relevant block of text. Hyperlinks are so easy! And I know it's possible. That Jared Diamond eBook I read last month had hyperlinks in the intro, if not in the rest of the book. Though that one could have had links to and from the photos too. "The Red Threads of Fortune" by JY Neon Yang. A sequel! Wow these characters are wonderfully lacking in jealousy. I appreciated the portrayal of Mokoya's emotional mindset.  LHC # 82: "The Language of the Third Reich: LTI Lingua Tertii Imperii: a philologist's no...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 23 - 28: Need to be taken up.  Chapter 29 - 30: Finished and posted.  Chapter 31 - 32: I combined 32 and 33 into one, removing a pointless stop off to make tea. Almost finished, almost posted.  Made a new Chapter 33 out of part of Chapter 35, originally a Fairfax chapter, but I decided Preston had to do that instead. I deleted all of Chapter 34 but about two paragraphs, and rewrote it to make Chapters 33 and 35 connect together.  Then I recrafted 35; part of it actually made sense when I started and got to delete about half of 36 because I didn't need it anymore. Also read Chapter 37 which looks like at some point in the distant past I combined two chapters together there too, because the POV switched half-way through. I'm sure it's better now.  I'm doing a project management course, and I'm using WWS as the project to manage, so expect this sucker to get finished.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  Last month...

LHC #76: "Midnight in Peking" by Paul French. Interesting to read this right after "The Poppy War", but that's how the library gave me them. It's the kind of history I love, full of details I have to look up. It's about the investigation into the murder of a white British (well, British enough) teenager in Peking in 1937, and what really (most likely) happened. LHC #77: "Witchmark" by CL Polk. This is the book I've waited longest for on Overdrive, so my expectations were high. This book was an absolute delight. It moved fast, it was funny and charming, and I loved it so much. "Upheaval" by Jared Diamond. The boy really wanted me to read this, so I did. The author has this odd tendency to say things like "100,000 Finns died, which is the equivalent of 9 Million present-day Americans" or "Meiji Japanese farmers had to pay 3% tax. My marginal tax rate in California is 44%" which I found repulsive. Having not...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 23: based on feedback, most of this chapter got deleted, and the rest is part of Chapter 26 now. Chapter 25: Last month I deleted it. This month I put back half and rewrote half the dialog so the characters were working at cross-purposes to each other. Then I posted it with Chapter 28, because they go together. Maybe I only need one? And if that's the case, it's this one. Chapter 27: Finished and posted. Chapter 28: Finished and posted. Chapter 29: Edit, edit, edit. Chapter 30: Edit. Chapter 31: Edit.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  I spent some time with my timeline and fit the B-plot into the A-plot. It worked better than you'd expect. I added about 4000 words. Short Story Wrote a flash for a contest but it came out too long so I think I'll polish it and send it elsewhere. Connecting Critted 8 Got back 4 Subs 2 Knitting Candlemas  by Jean Moss. I started the month on the gussets, wondering if I would have enough ...

LHC #72: "The Hare With Amber Eyes" by Edmund de Waal.  Recommended by a coworker. This is the first thing I've read where I was actively glad I was reading on a computer, because Google was so available. I looked up a lot of paintings and words. The sections about suffering through world wars 1 and 2 certainly put my own not-very-difficult situation in perspective.  "What if this were enough?" by Heather Havrilsky.  I think I like her better when she's trying to help other people solve their problems, rather than going on (and on) about her own. LHC #73: "Silver on the Road" by Laura Anne Gilman.  Two-week wait on Overdrive. I loved the worldbuilding and the dynamic between Izzy and Gabriel. Highly recommended. LHC #74: "The Wrong Stars" by Tim Pratt.  Another book I read on overdrive. This was a fun read, and it helped me understand what one of my peers on OWW was going for last year. Sorry I misunderstood the style before, dude! ...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 24: Read again and posted. Chapter 26: Read and posted (with an explanation of what happened to Chapter 25 which I deleted). Chapter 27: Read and moved the second half to chapter 29, then expanded the first half so there was some tension (I hope). Chapter 28: I considered deleting this one too, but the world needs more Abigail. Maybe I'll move it into the Chapter 25 spot? Worked on my synopsis, which I will need.  Chapter 29-31: Read for new continuity, because I changed some things that had ripple effects.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  I was wandering about outside one day and my B-plot fell onto me, basically. And it's a good B-plot that makes sense I think now. It basically came with locations and a rhythm that meshes well with the A-plot and uses my characters in an interesting way. Short Story Notes for two. Connecting Critted 8 Got back 8 Subs 2 Knitting Sunny skies of winter  (KP 2015 FI) Finished cuff ...

LHC #67: "The Falconer" by Elizabeth May. I might have put this on my list because the author shares a name with the current leader of Canada's Green Party. I wasn't fond of the main character. It's written in first person present, and my lack of connection with Aileana made that rough. It was a quick read. LHC #68: "We Will All Go Down Together" by Gemma Files. This must be the fifth or sixth book I've read by her? It really helped me focus my main witch character in WWS, and also I learned from the pronunciation guide that I've been saying one of the characters' names wrong for about 10 years. Oh well. LHC #69: "The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories" by Joan Aiken. Strange is so true. I'd just received this book when the library closed for the foreseeable future due to COVID-19. On the day I started reading it, I took it with me to visit my mechanic, because the check engine light was on, then walked over to...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 21-22: edited based on OWW feedback.  Chapter 23: Posted   Chapter 24: Fixed a huge continuity error; refined the motivations of the three characters that are in this chapter (Preston, Metatron, and Sumiel). Chapter 25: Read it, decided it was not necessary, deleted it. Chapter 26: (I'm keeping the numbering system going forward because I added a chapter 13.1 last month, and it's just easier to keep track of this way.) Read. I also went through my notes and worked on my character lists and descriptions, which many reviewers have said were lacking. This does not seem to have made people like chapter 23 but whatever. It's useful for me.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  Started the month with 82,000 words. I mentioned last month, this is hard to work on with a pandemic going on. I got over that by writing how my pandemic learns from that one and is different. I haven't really gotten very far with this, but it's fixable. ...

I think I have been deluding myself. I got let go from my job of 22 years back in mid-January, and suddenly had tons of time to do whatever I wanted all day, which meant I got up at 9 then walked over to one of the dozen or so Tim Horton's within walking distance, then walked home, then read the entire internet, then tried to write for a while.  It's been really nice. I can get to the pharmacy when I have a prescription to pick up, I don't have to plan my workday around when I can get to the library to acquire my holds, I can read every day, I can knit. I don't have to take a day off if I want to meet someone for coffee or take a dance class. However. Before, when I had that job for 22 years, I thought I was writing every day. I got up in the morning and did my morning stuff, then sat down in my writing spot and looked at my writing, and for the last few years because I have enough first drafts already (and a lot of that page-a-day stuff I used to write would be k...

"Danagerous Ages" by Rose Macaulay. Marissa Lingen read this last month, and made me want to read it. LHC #65: "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge.   The tines (wolfpacks) were fantastic, and so was the galaxy, with the slow zones, etc. I'm not sure I truly understood it, but it was really cool. LHC#66: "Permutation City" by Greg Egan.  The last from the  Jo Walton SF list  that I've been reading for months and months! For some reason I put this on my book list that I make while reading Locus (a very different list than the LHC list let me tell you -- I will never read all those) on about the same day I was setting new books to "active". Anyway, this book really drove home how I don't want to go live in the singularity. It seemed awful.  "The Raven Tower" by Ann Leckie. Got it for Christmas. Really awesome. This is one I will try to force on others. The POV character was great, I loved how it was sort of omniscie...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 21:   Posted Chapter 22: This chapter was finishable, so I did, and it's posted too.  Chapter 1 3.1: I wrote half a chapter here, maybe Chapter 13.2: This was why I had to write 13.1, actually. I moved half of chapter 40 (!) to here because the tension it adds is way more useful early in the story, and to make that work I had to alter a whole bunch of other stuff.   Chapter 23:  Chapter 24: I did manage to read this and made some markups.  During the process of relabeling all the chapters, I realized the first half of chapter 40 needed to be somewhere around Chapter 12, which meant I had to add some time and figure out what my various characters are really up to in the background (when they're not on the stage). This reinforces the idea that I should go back to the beginning and redo those introductory 20 chapters while I continue to push to the end.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  Started the month wi...

LHC #62: "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner. I was intimidated by the length, and got confused by the vast cast of characters, but it was still really good. "The Book of Dust" by Philip Pullman. The boy gave it to me for Christmas, and I devoured it. Now I need to watch the HBO His Dark Materials series, and also read some other books in the series. LHC #63: "Cyteen" by CJ Cherryh. The first 30 pages were a slog, but then this one was no problem at all to read. Apparently it was originally published as a trilogy. I cannot see how that could have possibly worked. There didn't seem to be wasted scenes anywhere, either. I don't feel like it answered the question it asked at the beginning, really, and I felt like it was going to. Apparently that's in the sequel. LHC #64: "Spin" by Robert Charles Wilson. Weirdly, I have a different book by RCW in my TBR pile. But I own that book, so the necessity to read it is so much lower! Thi...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 21:   I read some of the comments on Chapter 20, and tried to use that here.   Chapter 22: Did some drafts, made some changes based on reading chapter 24… Chapter 23: At this point things fall apart. I realized there is absolutely no thread of the goal of the bad guy in this novel, and started just making notes and thinking about going back to the beginning and starting over. So I might actually do that – go through a couple of chapters per month and try to make the first half of this project a little more cohesive. Chapter 24: I did manage to read this and made some markups.  Navigationally, I’ve been really enjoying what I can do with Persephone, so I went back and renamed all my chapters with POV character and a bit of what happens so I can find things faster. I’m also considering moving it to Google Docs. Persephone (probably not its real name) Last month ended with me discovering a horrible, horrible thing that one of my character...