Am on sick leave today because the wretched remnants of illness still lingered this morning. My New Year’s Eve was spent with a fever; I was so out of it that I was extremely content to be alone, and toasted the new year with a cup of peppermint tea. I’ve been under the weather ever […]
writing
New things at the year’s end
I hope everyone has had a lovely relaxing holiday! I had a nice time: plenty of alone time combined with family. Alone time was spent eating leisurely breakfasts and writing my Finnish short story. …My short story which I’ve now sent off to the competition! I’m so pleased that I managed to get a story […]
Huzzah! she shouted
I thought today was going to be a horrendous day, because I had to get up after barely six hours of sleep (for the third or fourth time running) and there was a panda zombie staring at me in the bathroom mirror. It’s been much better than I thought. Firstly: there is snow! Huzzah! Beautiful, […]
Drastic changes: they can work
On Wednesday, I finally decided to do something I’ve never done before in my five years of Nanowrimo: to abandon the story I was working on and start a new one. Now, when I say ‘abandon’ I don’t mean entirely – no, I’ll probably work on the 31K of the first story eventually. Could work […]
Nanowrimo, day 1
Heyup. Have officially passed the word count for the first day of Nanowrimo 2012! Fifth Nano year, here I come. Exhausted from real-life things. But gosh, it felt rather awesome to escape into my own world for a while – to start something completely new, something utterly unknown! My Nanovel this year is high fantasy. […]
FINISHED FIRST DRAFT
IT’S CAPSLOCK TIME. I just finished the official first draft of DV. *FIREWORKS* It is rough, especially towards the end when I started having serious lack-of-time problems; it’s a first draft. But for the first time ever, I have revised a novel. I now have a novel-length narrative (279 1,5-spaced pages in Open Office; 13,2587 […]
On being a stubborn fool
Apologies for the lack of updates this month! I’ve mostly just been plodding along with my novel revision. And then I, previously unemployed and with plenty of time on my hands, was suddenly inundated by a strange event: getting a job. Well, two jobs, in fact. One of them a two-week temp gig (next week […]
Poetry in October Snakeskin!
A lovely start to October: my poems Fragments and At Right Angles with Myself have been published in the October issue of Snakeskin (issue 190). Yay! I’m really pleased those two poems found a home. They’re two very different states of mind; I can remember with absolute clarity what I felt when writing each of […]
The cutting pain
Cutting out characters is a terrible thing. And yet sometimes, it has to be done. This is one of the cruel truths of writing fiction. I finally started the proper edit/rewrite of my novel (DV for short) this weekend. I’m calling it the first draft, because really, my Nanowrimo efforts (from 2008 and 2011) made […]
Poetry sale: Strange Horizons
My poem ‘Wolf Daughter’ is forthcoming in Strange Horizons! I am bouncily happy about this. Strange Horizons is a wonderful publication that I really enjoy reading, and dude, my poem is going to be part of it! Also, this is officially both a) my first speculative fiction publication, and b) the first time I will […]