Last Night

Good class, but I noticed I answered one of the reading questions completely wrong. Crap.

He did a class debate last night, and it was incredible to actually see people saying out loud, in front of other people, that the US was in Iraq for "humanitarian reasons", and that the US does that "all over the world".

*boggle*

Oooooookay. They're young. Just keep repeating that. It's NICE, and QUAINT to see they still think we're the good guys.

On the plus side, I got more writing done last night before class, so I'll type that today if I ever get a fucking minute. I'm trying to type envelopes and the printer refuses to cooperate. I even deleted EVERY FUCKING ONE of the envelopes EXCEPT the one I wanted, and it still printed a different envelope.

Yeah, I'm a little short on temper this morning, so I don't need that shit from the piece of shit printers we have here.

AHHHHHHHH!

I'm going bug shit crazy around here! What happened to the nice quiet days?

!!!

Today I'll get to go upstairs, and hopefully it'll be quiet. Jesus!

Speaking of which, I had dinner last night in a church banquet hall with Birdie and the Monroe County Master Gardeners, of which she is one. She got her bronze badge last night, which was cool, and she insisted that I work on my paper (due in four hours) during the flower arranging demonstration. (That was excellent. The woman is IU faculty, so she lectures well, and does beautiful arrangements.) I got most of it done, and there were cookies near my table every time I faltered and needed a pick-me-up. ;-)

Today in 296 I will have time to work on chapter 9 instead of frantically trying to finish the paper.

If I live that long.

[later]

Well sure nuff, I got upstairs into the quiet, finished my paper and started typing the notes for chapter nine - only I ended up writing rather than note taking, and yet AGAIN, it took a pleasant spin away from the more mundane path I had foreseen. Not a huge difference, but more interesting to read than what I had been about to write.

Yea! More words!

Wow, That's Cool

I was reading some chapter nine notes I jotted down more than a few days ago, thinking how great it'll be when I get a chance to do some serious writing (today!) and was kinda blown away. Cool ideas. Now I need to get my butt moving on putting down the words.

Two-fer

Have I ever had two posts in a day? Eh, whatever. I'm overwhelmed at work and need a break.

To that end, I played with google and came up with an interesting thing. The Massai believe that when they see a comet bad things will happen. The medicine man says, "If we see another comet, people who are green in color will come out of the water and visit our country. Should they be killed, caul-fat instead of blood will see issuing from their bodies."

I wonder if I could get obscure with the title and call it Caul Fat Bodies. Or maybe Comet Death.

See how bored I am? ;-)

Back to work! (Because I really am busy.)

Life Of Ease

At least when I'm not at home working my ass off for most of the long vacation weekend. Sheesh! Last Tuesday was no hot shower day, so Wednesday, the first day of vacation and the day we had chosen to see Roman Art of the Louvre at the Indianapolis Museum of Art was filled with big, huge trucks in our drive (we got a new tank of gas - $1200 - but they didn't re-set it so it could still fall over any minute, blow up and destroy the house - we're undecided as to whether this would be a good thing...and the furnace guy was there for hours fixing the parts he broke last week, just in time for the cold snap) and a guy going in and out of our house. Sometimes he wiped his feet, and the cats were freaked for days.

I dug the canna bulbs out, about ninety feet worth. Yeah, it damn near killed me, but it was supposed to get cold and wet the next day so there you go. Thursday was house cleaning and dinner eating (no, I did manage not to get in Birdie's way in our tiny kitchen). I celebrated having hot water again by doing huge loads of laundry.

Friday we finally got around to fixing the back door. She of course expected to be in and out and then we'd fix the woodstove, but it took nearly all day. I stayed out of her way as much as I could, doing other chores. We worked ALL day on it and fell asleep really early.

Saturday we finally got up to the museum and spent three pleasant hours looking at statuary nearly two thousand years old. Cool.

And DIDN'T it just get cold that day. Brrr! Winter has hit, so yesterday, instead of finally taking a day off, we got the stove going, which meant closing off the rest of the house and firing it up till the stove black I had applied burned off. Seems like we did a better job of putting the thing together than last year. Burns well, and looks a lot better with the new blacking.

Writing? It is to laugh. I didn't even do my homework.

Slogging

Still pushing ahead, almost always at work, though more and more lately I'll manage to get some writing done at home. There's no privacy there, and way too many distractions, like, you know, WORK.

Last night I handwrote a page on chapter nine while in class, after typing a few hundred words in 296. Today I'll pretty it up (aka put in the right place on my flash drive) and do some more words. Pretty quiet here today.

This is a bad day...at least for me. For my acquaintance Kelly Pfaffenburger, it's a great day because the local PBS station told her officially today that it's a go on the tv show she pitched to them last spring, ironically when she was at a very low point after quitting a beloved job after running into her own private Terry.

Long Long UN-Romantic Weekend

I truly suck. I don't know why Birdie lets me stay.

Enough of dwelling on that. How about I dwell on getting a B (!!!) on my midterm. I don't GET that kind of grade. Doesn't happen. I take great notes, then TYPE them. I do all the reading. I've only got ONE FREAKIN CLASS, so it's not like I've got six bazillian class things to deal with, AND I test well. This has been eating at me all day, making me wonder if my mental decline - the one everyone in my family deals with eventually - has begun.

Chapter nine if finally started, anyway. I had to begin again when the stuff I wrote last week just wasn't right. What I had done was go back to when they were screaming at each other and pick it up from Kelsey's viewpoint. Pretentious. Unwieldy. Eh, I just started on the porch in the early, early morning with, "It was a beautiful night." Heh heh heh. Well it is, except for the dead people wandering around.

I still feel like this book is a load of crap, but I'm going to at least finish it.

Long Long UN-Romantic Weekend

Holiday Blahs

Last week I was hot to get going and this week I'm having trouble writing. This sucks!

This is the I'm Tired Of Waiting period I've always run into before, that's what it is, and I WILL not let it stop me. (I hope.)

[later]

OHMYGOD...I was just trying to make small talk with one of the dance faculty, Laura, and asked her what she thought of the title "Comet Zombie." She BURST out laughing and trying to talk. I finally figured out I had said "Common Zombie" and thought it was pretty funny.

What a great title for a zombie spoof!

Kate and Susan and I should write a spoof! Or maybe a radio play. ;-)

[later still]

Then she came up with the title Amazombia. I figured it could be the sequel.

Mold Alert

I'm SO stoned right now. Why does this never happen when I'm at home to enjoy it? Hmph.

Last night was my midterm. Well done test that took me nearly an hour to finish. If I can get my head working, I'm going to get into chapter nine today - but I'm having a hard time even keeping my head up off my desk.

Say WHAT?

NEXT week is Thanksgiving? How'd that happen? I only have to work 2 days next week!!! WHOO HOO!!!

Ahem. Maybe I can get some work done on chapters nine and ten. I haven't done more than outline in the last few days because I haven't had much free time - not super busy, just, no free time. Today I'll be upstairs in 296 for an extra hour and a half, but tonight's my midterm so I'll have to study instead.

Nuther Backup

Well, it's happened again. I was a few hundred words into chapter nine when I realized it wasn't working, so I had to change the time it started by a few hours. I'm going so slowly already that having do overs is very frustrating...

Kinda like posting on Blogger and getting an error message.

Backward Cat

We have two backward cats, who bring mice into the house so they can play with them. This morning we had TWO running around - I noticed the first one when I was studying for my midterm and saw a rodent running around the middle of the living room floor.

I'm at a bit of an ebb right now with interest in writing. That's bound to change this afternoon when I get upstairs, but I tried working on chapter nine and kinda bounced off of it. Knowing chapter eight (as it exists now) is weak was a factor. I'm going back to Kelsey's POV for this chapter, which I hoped to use to further show what the world is like now, and to give her a bad emotional day.

[later]

Lunch was fairly productive. Birdie had to stay home today so I was in the (WAY TOO QUIET) staff lounge. Should have been studying for my mid term, but instead whipped out my bowling pencil and worked on Kelsey's motivations. Wrote about a page and a half, and now I feel better - at least emotionally. Yeah, I don't feel good again. I think I may have developed an egg allergy, which really sucks because I need a flu shot, considering where I work.

Much Better

A quiet day, the furniture is here so those morons can't show up. The dance auditions are today, so there are 32 young people trying to get into the Dance major here. All the other secretaries are off on a retreat today, doing the girly thing. It's a standing joke here that I will ALWAYS be available to cover the office on this day. ;-)

Yesterday I rushed to the end of chapter eight, which will be improved on the re-write, but I wanted to keep with Kate's strategy of "get 'er dun". Then I sent it to her and ran out the door. Today I will work on chapter nine, in which Kelsey and Parker, in their first full day of End Of The World will explore that world a little more. It's basically going to be a series of vignettes, and Kelsey is going to suffer the emotional shock of finding out there's a good chance she's going to die of zombie infection anyway. It changes her perspective, to say the least.

And I'm feeling the urge to go back and re-read what I've written again, but I don't know if I need to. We'll see. I haven't decided if I'm losing sight of the whole picture or not.

Shoulda Been

A slow day here, but the fucking office furniture guys turned up unannounced AGAIN, so now I have to stuff all my desk stuff into a box AGAIN and stop working while I rearrange and of course I have rush jobs and of course I wanted to finish chapter 8. And yeah, it PISSES ME OFF that the other ladies here (buncha wimpy straight girls) think I'm being "mean" for being irritated at this.

Assholes.

How about this for a title: Comet Zombie

My goal today - since I'm getting an unexpected trip to 296 this afternoon - is to finish chapter 8. I think I can do it, and I hope it happens because I'm looking forward to 9 and 10. Nine will be very short but fun, I hope.

The End

My vision of where this book is going is getting clearer all the time. This is so exciting. Too bad I can't just walk down the hall and start typing instead of having to wait. Holy Frustration, Batman!

So I've got the end in sight and know what I'm working toward, and I know how chapter eight will end and what chapters nine and ten will look like, and this morning the path toward the end brightened just a bit and I wrote that all down (the ideas that is). The climactic end is still kinda murky but I know essentially what's going to happen. (And hey, it changed once before, who's to say it won't change again!) It's not entirely changed from the original ending, but it hits different points and has different meanings.

Kelsey is going to find out (today, if I can get some writing time) that Parker thinks she's going to die and come back because of the zombie injury and of course this freaks her out. It makes her resolve to kill zombies even stronger, especially the finding out how to kill them rather than simply incapacitating them. He tells her that they need to try shooting them in the head, but then they have to get a gun. That's not as easy as it sounds, of course, and they don't actually find a gun till chapter ten and then they have to figure out how to get their hands on it. Hopefully this will be a gross and funny scene. She is emphatic about learning if they can be killed and how so she can possibly help Parker live through the whole thing. Not that she likes him that much, but he's a live human.

My thought this morning is, am I a good enough writer to keep that suspense going - will it work? (shooting them in the head) - and never really give away the answer? Stay tuned.... ;-)

p.s.

OH! And writing down that made me think of another way to enhance the ending. This is so FUN!

Waiting for the Whine

It still amazes me I'm going along putting down the words. I really expected to be whining about not getting it done here. Oh hell, let's tell the truth. I expected this blog to die out in no time as well.

Chapter eight starts with a dream sequence - we'll see how that works - then goes into some conversation and more exploration of the Kelsey/Parker dynamic. I think it may end up being a shorter chapter than the others, because it feels like I'm near the end of it already and I'm only at 1700 words.

Still looking forward to writing it, still excited to see where it's going. Yeah, I have an outline of the next two chapters and I know how it'll end, but between here and there it's still just an idea. Normally that would be scary, but I have enough confidence now to know it's not going to stop me.

Now if only someone will buy the movie rights and let me retire early so I can write more. ;-)

Ah HA

While walking to the car Friday night it suddenly occured to me how the book is going to end. It makes sense and is a nice ending scene. Having a point to write toward again is feeling pretty nice.

That day I had gotten about 700 words done, working on the beginning of chapter eight, having already done a good bit of the middle. *g* It starts with a dream sequence, which may or may not work, but I'm going to leave it in for now to see how I like it later. I took Parker inside of the gas station out of chapter seven and was going to just do away with it, but I think he's going to have a bad dream about it that night instead.

Working on the house again after taking October off. We got there with a certain plan and lots of energy, but I broke two tools and didn't measure twice to cut once and ruined my faux brick panelling. Hmph.

Talk Talk Talk

Parker and Kelsey take some down time, eat, sleep and get to know each other better. That means there's a lot of talking in chapter eight. I know I shouldn't pile on the exposition, but I also know there needs to be some making-your-aquaintanc time. Eh, it'll all change in the re-write, right? ;-)

Class Is Good

I'm discovering that, even though this Political Science class is time consuming what with all the mind-numbingly boring reading about primary election statistics, I'm actually getting more work done on the book! I've got a few minutes after work and before class, then a few minutes sitting in the classroom waiting to start, then an intermission - it's a 2 hour and 15 min class TWICE a week - and I just scribble. The next day I type it up and of course add to it without effort.

Last night I blocked out the rest of chapter eight, came up with a cool idea for chapter nine, and THEN figured out how to get a gun for Kelsey and I think it's going to be a big laugh moment in the book. Disgusting, but funny. *g*

I haven't told Kate this yet, but I've completely left the outline and am just going with wherever the characters take me - mostly, not entirely. I know I still want them to meet Reverend Spevak, but I'm not going to describe his backstory, how he survives the comet (but, in a nutshell, he's doing a PR visit to a hospital, sees the same thing on tv that Parker sees, locks his goons out in the hallway and steals oxygen from a senior citizen), but he's not a nice guy and he's going to test Parker and Kelsey's trust in each other.

I made sure to read Kate's chapter six this morning and was completely mezmerized. Really good stuff, and I'm enjoying it enormously.