Robynettely

This month I got a job, which had a substantial impact on my schedule. After a year of freedom, I need to find a better way to work my own projects back into my time.  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29-46:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 47-48:  Finished and posted.  I messed a lot with the POVs of both these chapters.  Chapter 49-51:  Read and revised. Did you notice what I did there? It used to be 50. This book just keeps getting longer and longer. This month I had to write a complete new chapter!  Persephone  (probably not its real name): Notes, as usual.  Short Stories:  Scratched at one a bit.  Critted  9  Got back  6 Submissions  0  Out there  2  Rejects 1, but it was a nice rejection!  Knitting Penzance socks (me).  Started the month with the cuff of the first sock. Finished. Penzance socks #2. In time-out.  Penzance socks #3.  Finished. Penzan...

"The Kingdom of Copper" by S.A. Chakraborty.  I meant toto ordered it when I finished the first one? But the spoilers at the end were somehow for book 3, so I ordered that one instead, and then it was coming in four weeks, so I had to read this one in a rush.  I felt like the author saw much more in Nahri than I did. I found it too stressful to be able to properly enjoy.   "The Empire of Gold" by S.A. Chakraborty.  And here we are.  One time this woman was making all sorts of accusations against me and one of them was that I had called her a crocodile. I thought it was the most... bizarre thing at the time. Maybe this book explained that?  I found it much more relaxing to read than the previous volumes, because the characters (some of them) were in a position to be kind to one another occasionally. Though Chapter 42 wasn't my favorite. It felt like she ran out of time. I  LHC #113: "Ruined by Design" by Mike Monteiro. Hard copy. The library has 4...

  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29-44:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 45-46:  Finished and posted.  45 wasn't in really bad shape, but one day I added 900 words to 46 after deleting a large chunk, because it was nonsense. I had glossed over the capturing of Susannah completely.  Chapter 47-50:  Read and revised.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): I was reading that book about the Panama canal, as research for Vinterlys, when I realized how this ends. Dark.  Short Stories:   I started the month with a little of list of places that would be open for small periods because I need to get more serious about this, and I need to finish short things because I can't finish WWS because it's too damn big. And I need to prove to myself that I am serious.  I started editing two stories because I finished about one last year and that's pathetic.  I sent something from the back catalog for the first deadlin...

  "Daisy Jones and the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  audio book. Recommended by someone in Toronto Life magazine. The weird thing is that it has nothing to do with Drake.  The audio book was probably a mistake, I found it too slow.  LHC #110: "Babel: around the world in 20 languages" by Gaston Doren.  This book was totally my jam.  LHC #111: "The City of Brass" by S.A. Chakraborty. Recommended in so many places, including by Ali A. Olomi, who tweets about Islamic astrology and Jinns and stuff. He'd probably also mentioned that book about the Arabian Nights that I read last month, which in turn mentioned a story about The City of Brass. So. Marie Brennan said in her capsule review of book 2 (this is book 1 of a trilogy) that it lacks a sense of humor. I'm not so sure. I found the first 10% a little tiresome, but when all the characters lie to each other so much, it got tremendously fun.  LHC # 112: "The path between the Seas: The creation of th...

Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29-43:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 43.2, 44:  Finished and posted.   Chapter 45-(end):  Read and revised.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): nothing to speak of. Short Stories:  Worked on a first draft of one.   Critted  10  Got back 12 Highlights of the month (there were two): Someone who read a lot of the early part of WWS came back to the workshop! And I got into another workshop, this one looking a bit more goal-oriented (if the goal is to get published).  Submissions  0  Out there  1  Rejects  0 Knitting Tee (me).  I'm almost at the bottom rib. Knit most of it while watching The Boys and Queens Gambit. Good shows.  Venezia Pullover (Interweave W2006). Finished.  Never Stressed Schweater (me).  Started Jan 1, did body and both sleeves to armscye, joined it all up.  Practice hoodie (me). Started the ribbi...

LHC #107: "Certain Dark Things" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Audio book. I finished a sweater while listening to it. It's about Mexican vampires. I found Domingo pretty annoying.  LHC #108: "Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights" by Marina Warner. Hard copy. Worth the effort.  LHC #109: "Wild Milk" by Sabrina Orah Mark. eBook. I had no recollection of requesting this back in 2019, but when it bubbled to the top of the list and I read the description, I was like "yeah, that's my jam." I wish the library's website had a notes field in the Holds interface! Also that it listed the length of the book, because this one is unintimidating, even if the cover is kind of weird. Oh, and it's published by the Dorothy Project, which I'm a fan of.  If I wrote stories like this people would get mad at me.  "The Tower and the Fox" by Tim Susman.  Free eBook because book 4 just came out. This is book 1. Kinda Hogwarts in...

Wind/Water/Salt While editing Chapter 43, I realized there was no way to explain from where Preston (POV character) was what Abigail was up to, and how she managed to do it, so I broke that chapter in half and stuck another chapter in the middle. So then I had 50 chapters, maybe 51? Then I read to the end, and deleted Chapter 46, and broke 47 into three. This made it possible for the characters to behave in anything like a consistent way. I don't even know how many chapters there really are anymore. Maybe 53?  Chapters 26-27: Took up comments.   Chapters 29-42:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 43 (including 43.1):  Finished and posted.   Chapter 44-(end):  Read and revised.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): I got to the part of my library reading list that had a lot of research books for this, which put me in the headspace again. This is the most musically motivated thing I've written, I think. Other people post ...

  LHC #104: "Gingerbread" by Helen Oyoyemi.  I actually remember wanting to read this when I put it on the list. I made gingerbread in its honor, and the boy asked if he could take some for his girlfriend, but it contained eggs and she's allergic, so I had to make another one... This book was worth every minute.  LHC #105: "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis. I got it out because it was the highest item on the list that didn't have a wait. Apparently it's book 2 of a series. I wish that had been clear on the synopsis on the library website? It's part of the description on Overdrive, but not on the main TPL site. And it was on my list because it was the only thing they had in hard copy by Connie Willis, which seems wrong somehow. I just looked, and the situation is better now.  Anyway, I think my dad would have loved Connie Willis. The science fictional time travel blended with the Wodehouse-style humor and energy would totally have been his...

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...