Quota holding up

2.2k today. I manage to keep my word count, which is good considering I only get just over two hours' worth of writing from my laptop.
I searched the entire coffee shop for a place to plug my computer in, but to no avail. New batteries are a must apparently.
As for the writing itself. Final battle ahead. I can smell the end of the book now, which by no means is he same as the end of my writing the book. A first draft is just that. Let's say another week writing, then one week cleaning up the worst mistakes and I should have a working first draft.
I haven't decided if I should put it away then and start working on a new book or if I should start editing and rewriting to get a second draft. There are advantages to both approaches.
Well, I'll take it when I'm there I guess. No reason to decide now.

Back to the keyboard again

Same hangout, different laptop. 2.4k words, which is ok. Two hours battery time -- on two fully loaded batteries. That's abysmal. Pretty new computer. Promised me three hours worth per battery. Talk about getting ripped off.

Scotsman ten years

And as if the celebration week for our local hangout wasn't enough the city's been invaded by Iron Maiden fans. Let's put it this way -- the first three hours no guessing was needed concerning the origins of what came out of the loudspeakers.
We still managed to get a couple of games out of the evening. Abysmal performance by me, but hey, old decks that needs trimming. Was fun to play again.

And about writing

Without a keyboard, or rather a functioning computer, writing becomes difficult. The absence of blog entries was also joined by a lack of writing for very much the same reason. One week away from the MS did reveal something though. Normally I'll silently write on in my head when I'm away from a medium suited to get words down permanently. The last week I didn't. Sure, I was sick, which might have had something to do with my lack of enthusiasm, but something?
The mad rush of late might have pushed me a bit further in the story than I was really prepared to handle, and well, then there isn't much more to do than get the story down on disk. It's not like there are any real surprises left. At least not for the writer.
The BANG is signaled, and after that there's only mopping up left. That leaves little for the imagination, at least as far as creating story goes. For me only the implementation is left.

No blogging

No entries the last week. I know, the excuse that your dog ate the homework is a poor one, but there are occasions when it comes rather closer to the truth.
My daughter, monstrous darling that she is, took her bottle with nutriment-solution and quite deliberately infused my laptop with water, honey and herbal tea. That she had such a strange mix in her bottle we have a contagious stomach disease to thank for, but anyway. The gooey laptop firmly refused to do anything much any longer. Thankfully my previous line of profession made me somewhat strict when it comes to backups, so I haven't lost anything more than a few bookmarks.

No Scotsman

Not my week for VTES now. Yesterday I missed out of our tournament, and now I'm getting cancellations for our weekly pub game. Seems no one's coming, so I think I'll have to abstain as well.
Talk about packing them on a stack.

Sifting through more photos

A little over a year ago we went to Heidelberg. Wife had a sprint to join, sprint meaning a method for rapid software development, and I was luggage or babysitter, pick any one.
It's a cosy town in a river valley and utterly invaded by tourists. It was the first time I learned to expect signs in Japanese in Europe.
The first shot is from the main square, the second from a small town upriver and the last one across the river one day when the town was baking in the late summer's heat.
The weather changed rapidly between days. When we took the bus to scout out the immediate surroundings rain poured down. I got the shot of the tree during a temporary lull in the raining. Pity, as it was my wife's day off.
Two days later the entire town sweated in a thirty degree heatwave.

Sulk

Was supposed to take part of a VTES tournament, and to have a full day with my wife without my daughter to boot. So, I know you're not supposed to say that loud, but I'm pretty sure parents have these feelings from time to time. Anyway, that didn't happen. Kid's sick and babysitter to be is as well. As my wife has the keys to the place where we run the tournaments she had to go and I'm home with a sleeping daughter.
I dislike missing out on the game, but when I don't see much of my wife for a month due to her workload I do get sulky. Even whining a bit.
So, sulk, there it is.

Freezing and looking through photos

Just feeling a bit cold when browsing through some pictures. Japan spring this year. Actually it wasn't all that warm, but somehow it feels warmer when you look at the pictures. Probably something with the colors.
What I recall it was just warm enough to shed windstoppers but not warm enough to discard sweaters. Still, the colors. I was told beforehand you have to see it to believe it, and, well, it was true.
The day was spent in Nara, and for those who have visited the city you will recall that apart from the beautiful temple park and shrines it really is just as horrendously ugly as most small Japanese cities are. But who wants to remember that when the visuals from the parks linger in your memory?

Trouble blogging

Either my comp's acting up on me or something's happened to Blogger beta. Updates refused, and I'm not even sure this post will get through.
So, it's a beta, but if the new sign-in message of the day is anything to go by then all new blogs are going to end up in the beta. In my book that makes it a beta no longer.
Getting error messages, have to reload and then find out that the failure notification was invalid. Blaeh!

Bloggerbot

Is a feature that doesn't work with the Blogger Beta. Really, write out that stuff won't work. Uploading pictures manually would have been a lot faster than struggling with a defunct system.

My office

I do belong to the clichéd group writing in a coffee house. The occasional pub works just as well, but home leaves me no peace. Anyway, three shots from the "office" I've frequented most the last two months.



Gothenburg makes full use of trams. Shot through window behind me.



And a last shot into the cafe.

Best of all -- high speed Internet on wireless included in the coffee and sandwiches I have while writing.

Bad computer

Not too happy with the company selling us the laptops we have. One rather expensive one with an abysmal battery time of less than one hour. The one I'm using now has a functional battery, but since they "repaired"the keyboard several keys have become insensitive. At the moment it's the space key, which creates some consternation over here.

Another good day

Ended at 3k. Sets me up for making 90 next week, which, mildly put wasn't anything I'd expected. Well, guess I should just accept my fortune with as much good grace as I can muster.

Rejection

No, I didn't receive any. Just wanted to visualize it. You do know we all look like this to the agents, don't you?

Highscore

8.1k words total today. New personal record. I've been writing in a trance today and it still remains to see how much of it is of any acceptable quality. I don't know. I don't even know fully what I've written. There's just this feeling that the story has progressed in the direction it had to take, but the how and why remains a mystery to me.
I wonder how usual this is for a writer. I mean, some days I have to apply severe violence to both mind and computer to cram out less than a thousand. A day like this -- I didn't write the story. It hijacked me and used my fingers. There's no other explanation, and all rationality be damned.

And even more words

A stiff 3k on disk. Almost at weeks quota which feels good. Joining the FM NaNo chat certainly helps keeping the words flowing. We've somehow institutionalized a new way of doing word wars. Just announce every one hundred words. One hundred words are so few it might feel laughable to measure them, but they add up in the end, and it's a lot, lot easier to aim a hundred ahead than setting the cross hair at two thousand.

And another good day's writing

Got 2.6k down on disk today. Gives me a little leeway, which could come in handy. It's a good feeling when the story flows down your hands more or less by itself. Still, there's a price to pay later. Self editing will be a horror when that day comes.

Scotsman VTES

Had a really wonderful evening of VTES yesterday. Got thoroughly routed twice and made a small comeback in the third game.
The new expansion really is a good one. Kudos to the creators.

Two more uploads

Chap twelve and thirteen with associated Intermezzos copied to private Wiki. A good way to measure progress for me.
Just received first input. Pointed out flaws I knew and some I had totally overlooked. All in all a positive crit. Now I just have to make good on those words and create a second draft so much better than the first one that Frays evolves into a truly readable story.
That is still not reason to deviate from my primary goal. Finish this first draft. Get those two words written: The End.

Mad furniture rush

Two days to IKEA. We had to move out a lot of shelves and that of course created a need for replacements. Went and bought furniture yesterday only to find out we needed more, so another run today.
Now it's all assembled and placed where it should stand, which means hugging the walls. So for the first time I can remember we're not short of shelf space. We'll see how many visits to our favorite book store it takes to make a lie of this statement.
Other than that I'm getting prepared for next weeks writing spree. Another 6k is the goal, ad it doesn't seem impossible at all. Let's hope it stays that way.

And at a slower rate

Unsurprisingly Thursday turned out slower than the day before. A stiff 1k is just about half of what I try to get down during a day, but I'm happy anyway. This week has yielded just about 7k which is one more than planned.

Good writing day

Daughter caught a cold and I had to void most of Tuesday's writing. Yesterday I set out to at least compensate for some of that lost time. Over 5k words, so I made good. Another 400 words will see me at my weekly goal of 6k, which considering it's 10 am here shouldn't be much of a hassle.
Got to love it when words flow freely.

Winter assault

Yep, definitely winter assault. Yesterday ten degrees celsius and a steady drizzle. Today minus three and walking the streets is just that much like skating without skates. Great, or something.
I recall loving winters. The earlier the better. I don't mean I disliked summers, but late autumns were kind of a period I preferred to be over and done with. Now, I'm not as certain any longer. Guess it's one of those age things I never believed in earlier.
Now, for you all inland sissies, minus three doesn't sound that cold, but if you live in a port city with the wind perpetually wading in from the sea during winter those moderately cold temperatures are a horror. Not only do you have to compensate for the wind whenever you check the thermometer, but that wind is as humid as is possible. I've walked around, shortly mind you, in my shirt sleeves in minus twenty. Brisk night, zero wind and all that. It's all right, but add wind and humidity and merely getting close to a window makes your brain freeze.
Well, in any way, autumn is temporarily over and done with. For a few days. We'll be back to the ordinary windy drizzle soon enough, and darkness.

Writing day off

Kid's sick with a cold, so no dedicated time for writing today. I did manage to cram together less than a full hundred, but that's such a pitiful word count it hardly counts at all. That leaves me in a situation, but I'll try to make good on those 70k at weeks end. One way or another.
My usual hangout is eerily silent. You can almost hear the fuse slowly burning. As most of the inhabitants are US subjects most of that powder keg will go boom in another two hours, a little less. They're all waiting for the madness called NaNoWriMo.
I wish them all fun, but I'm not taking any part of it. I have my own piece of writing. Staying on schedule I should finish November at pretty much exactly half the NaNo speed.

Rape and paste...

... is what you do when the server is behind a firewall shutting out almost every normally used port.
Thank all higher powers it was only text that I needed moved. Ancient editor up in an equally ancient command prompt window. Mark the wanted text, more to second window and paste it into Wordpad. Save and name the file. Rince and repeat fifty times...

Fun? No.

Well, close to twenty five years worth of saved poems safely downloaded. Reading them through I wonder if my 90% into the trashbin filter was even close to sufficient. There's a lot of rather awful penmanship in those surviving 10% I copied.
They say you should put your writing away for some time, but almost ten years? And it left me with some ten poems I'm still proud of. Now that's a huge 2%. A sign as good as any other that I should steer clear of poetry I guess.