This is the blog entry I meant to write before I started talking about the SEN and myself a while ago. (Well...this blog entry is about me, too, but at least it's not me whining about the SEN, which should be a nice change.)

So...the weekend! We had cold but otherwise lovely weather. In fact, I had a lovely, productive weekend.

Saturday morning, I took my usual, indulgently slow start to the weekend day. Halfway through my first pot of coffee, I decided to look for the Christmas cards I bought, then laid aside neatly to await the holiday season. I go to my room and look on the available surfaces...no cards in sight.

Two hours and three lawn-and-leaf bags full of trash later, my room and closet were very tidy, but the cards were still missing.

I took a break...went to the living room to have some coffee and sit down for a few minutes, and spotted the cards on the table beside my chair.

I'm not organized. Sometimes I think losing something in my room and having to look for it is the only way it ever gets cleaned out. Fortunately I lose something four or five times a year. It helps keep the mess from taking over.

Saturday afternoon...the usual lunch-and-shopping parade. This week it was Mexican food and a trip to Target to stock up on shampoo, paper towels, and suchlike staples. (I had a headache and a burning desire for a laptop, so I decided to avoid more tempting stores.)

I found an inexpensive butcher-block style table to use for a printer stand, something the second printer made a necessity.

Back home...Some Assembly Required. Hooray! I get to use my electric screwdriver!

And then, of course, we had to rearrange half the living room to make a space the new table and the one we moved out, and every piece of furniture we moved revealed just what a lousy job of vacuuming I've done in that place over the last three months. Embarrassing. (Writing and housekeeping aren't compatible. Especially when you have an ostensible full-time job as well.)

Sunday, the usual loitering around the house, either writing, editing, or pretending. I dug through my notes to see what else I have to work on when (if!) the SEN ever moves out of my brain.

Three Due South, one Sentinel, and, yes, I'm sorry, three more OaT. These are all considerably shorter than the monster that's been sucking up my attention for the past three months.

(For any of you who wonder why I sometimes babble on and on about boring things...I've been sitting on hold for 8 minutes and 29 seconds. Writing blog entries is what I do when I'm on hold.)

The DS and the Sentinel are rather pointless stories of the I thought of some dialogue kind, the same stuff I used to write so much of. (Lynnzo was kind enough to volunteer to be guinea-pig to read the outlines for a couple of these. She laughed out loud. I think that's promising, don't you?)

Two of the OaT stories, you'll be happy to hear, already exist in first draft. I wrote them 'way back when and then threw them aside in disgust. I'm hoping that the distance of a few years and the Educational Experience I've had with the SEN will allow me to turn them into actual stories. Assuming, of course, I wind up having learned anything from the SEN besides not to bite off more than I can chew.

The other may and/or may not turn out to be a sequel to the SEN. I've always wanted to write (those fatal words....) a story with a lot of mood in it. I wrote one I thought wasn't bad for HL many years ago, but the one person I showed it to didn't like the way I'd ignored character development in favor of emphasizing story tone, so I put it away. Now I think I'm ready to try again.

Sometimes I'm not sure if I like writing, or I just love paper*. I printed out all my notes on all seven** stories, stuck them into special folders I bought for that kind of thing, and found a special place for them to wait in my newly tidied room.

(Four minutes and forty-six seconds, this time.)

It almost seems a pity to write the stories. They look so promising, there in their matching folders, you know?

My head hurts and I don't like people who use 'hold' music on their phone systems. I understand it lets the caller know they haven't been cut off by accident, but I preferred the olden days, when someone would actually talk to you.

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* Paper and pens. The Massive Rewrite project I'm undertaking on the SEN necessitated going through a printed draft of the story and marking different passages with one of two highlight colors, to indicate which "angle" the scenes needed to be rewritten to fit. Other edits I decided on as I went were marked in red ink. The actual re-writes are in purple ink. I don’t know how people manage with fewer than nine pens, four highlighters, and six colors of post-it notes***, I really don't.

** Maybe eight. No, seven. Maybe eight. One of the OaT stories exists in two formats. One is 21k words and has some stuff I love in it. The other is 5k words and lacks the stuff I love but, I suspect, is a better story.

That is going to be an interesting project. Possibly I can pull the 5k out of the 21k and replace it with other material. Possibly I'll have to choose one story or the other and risk having to delete my favorite OC. It's very exciting.

Why do I have to work for a living? I could be home making theses decisions!

***And laptop computers. How can I continue to write without a laptop computer? I find myself reluctant to write more than the shortest possible version of any scene when I'm writing on paper, because I always have the threat of transcription looming over me. Sometimes it's a problem because a scene needs to be more detailed.

I don’t think it should count that I just spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a laser printer and a printer stand and a chair and a chair mat and paper and pens and new clothes and books. I need a laptop. As the holidays grow nearer, and sales begin to appear, I have a Deep-Laid Plot to sneak out and buy one, one day.

By the time the person responsible for reining in my excesses realizes I have it, I'll have had it for too long to be able to return it for a refund. Doesn't matter what she does or says, even if she tells Mom on me. It will be mine! Mine! All mine!

If she promises not to tell Mom, I'll let her borrow it.