deadline

[dragonlady7]

I seem to have just volunteered to host Thanksgiving for my family.
Well. Good for me. I'd better get that kitchen done by then, as well as at least one of the bedrooms, and I should probably have gotten a good running start at the basement as well, since someone's going to have to sleep there if they all show up.

(Mom and Dad will only show if Katy's child is not born yet. That's right around the due date. So it seemed stupid to me for all of us to be planning on Thanksgiving-In-Melrose-Maybe-Without-The House's-Residents-Even-Present. And I'm more centrally located for Ann coming in from Chicago...)

So yes. Deadline. Now I am not only waiting to schedule a mattress delivery, but also have to be ready for Thanksgiving.

If only I could make myself have more energy and want less to sit down and finally fucking write something-- it has been a hellish summer from the standpoint of getting something written. Argh!

Comments

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

Well, it certainly makes sense to not have Thanksgiving at a place that might be empty. And I'll bet your place is bigger than Ann's or Fiona's. And you're a great cook.
But the key to successfully Thanksgiving-hosting is to ask each guest to bring something so you don't have to buy all the food.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it just made sense to offer to host it. And I do have space in my house, I just don't have *finished* space. But I think I can make the basement not super-creepy, by November. I just need to get the ground floor sorted at least partially... I can do it. I totally can. I just... wow, I still need more furniture.

> ask each guest to bring something

Well, that's kind of the problem. OK, that's problem #2.
Problem #1: My table only holds 4 people.
Problem #2: My guests will be driving 12, 6, and 4 hours respectively. What can they possibly bring?

Solution to #1: Have feast buffet-style. Argh. Or move dining table to basement and eat in the weird dark down there.

Solution to #2: Ask people to make things once they arrive. I *do*, despite having a tiny house, have two ovens and three fridges. Yeah I don't know why either, but I do.

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

Your guests could easily bring bread/rolls/dessert (depending on how they arrive - might not want to fly with a pie I guess).

Also, I have a proposition -- not that kind! -- for you. We've both had a crappy summer as far as putting BIC and writing. I really want to goad myself into starting again. How about a mini-challenge between the two of us? Most pages in a week, or a race to the finish line, or whatever...

Let me know if you might be interested, or if you find that sort of thing annoying or stressful rather than inspiring.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I might leave it up to my guests what they bring. Mom actually has a specially-designed basket that was built a hundred years ago to bring pies to church suppers. Couldn't fly with it, but she'll drive anyway.
But I don't want to count on her for something and then have her be in Georgia because, well, I'm an aunt.

Crap I forgot my little sister is sometimes vegetarian. Should enquire as to the status of that.

>mini-challenge

This might indeed be some kind of fun. I found novel_in_90 to just be irritating this year, but part of that was just that there were so damn many people in it and it was just relentless and chipper.
I just still don't know when I'd do it.
And my other problem is, of course, having too many projects and not focusing on one. I really need to get myself a good critique partner or class or something, because I think knowing that someone was going to notice how much I wrote in a week and have something to say about it would be a huge help. But that's even more of a time commitment and it's hard to find someone who's at the same level of output/level of seriousness/etc. I don't know if you'd be interested in something like that.
About once a year I attend a local writing group and they just keep getting younger and less serious while I get older and moreso, and anyway their idea of 'writing group' is to talk excitedly and loudly about their own projects (which are sort of artfully weird to out-weird one another) and not listen to other people's responses. So, phoo.
But it's such a commitment to have to have an opinion on someone else's writing, as well as thinking of your own, that I can see why it's hard to set such a thing up.
I'd love to try a challenge or something, but I'm not so good at just posting word counts, consistently... I'd do my best, though!

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

knowing that someone was going to notice how much I wrote in a week and have something to say about it would be a huge help
Yeah, that was what I was thinking too -- not so much posting publicly as emailing each other to say "here is what I did this week."

I've tried a few online critting partnerships and as you say, it is really tough to find someone at the same level. Given the fic and novel excerpts of yours I've read, I think we'd be pretty compatible and I'm definitely interested in trying that, if you didn't mind me being slow with the comments occasionally.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Oh definitely, that would be ideal.
I'd probably be slow with comments sometimes too-- life keeps getting in the way of things.

Of course i have the problem that everything I write is terribly long. But I think the idea of having someone with little time to read it would probably be a more effective incentive to edit properly than the feeble incentive of a theoretical audience. It's easier to edit one's deathless prose and murder all one's darlings when it's in context.

Let's do this! I'm excited. My email is my lj username @ gmail.com.