well it’s almost Tuesday and I haven’t

via http://ift.tt/2aNkc5i:
well it’s almost Tuesday and I haven’t totally rewritten chapter 6 like I needed to.

I haven’t really written anything else either. It’s just. even when there’s time here, there’s just so much going on. Which is great, because it definitely staves off the existential angst. I’m overall happier and doing better at most things and all. Except my skin is falling off and maybe I’m dying. But other than that. 

I still haven’t written basically fuck-all. So that’s annoying. I don’t want to miss the update but I doubt I’ll get twelve solid hours tomorrow to write. 

Chapter 6 is currently 700 words long. Only 9300 to go, how hard could it be? Ha ha.

I want to at least do a Shara/Kes post instead but none of that’s quite showtime-ready either. My output is like. Nothing. Ugh. 

On the upside I set up my old Pennsic EZ-Up next to the yurt so now I have a living room I can hang citronella kerosene lanterns in and sit and write, which I’m doing now. So that’s nice. I have a view of the commercial vegetable garden as the dusk really sets in. In a couple minutes though it’ll be full dark and I’ll get so creeped out I have to go inside. It’ll be okay though. 

I wish Dude was here. He was going to visit, but at this point I just don’t think he’ll get around to it. 

The insects are loud here and I keep seeing hunting bats swoop along the edges of the forest. I can’t hear the creek over the insects’ noise. 

I slept really well last night. Cold is good for sleeping. It was only like 55. Warmer in the yurt; I had a tiny olive oil lamp going. (Olive oil lamps, btw, are like, the fucking bomb. Go to a thrift shop and pick up cheap little glass bowls or cups, twist a chunk of a coat hanger or some other finer-guage wire to hold a bit of cotton string (thicker is better), then play with wick length and oil depth, and you have a basically free pretty much infinite candle. It drives me nuts now to see candles in “period” or “primitive” settings when literally every culture used a variation of this kind of oil lamp before refined fuels. I don’t even use olive oil, it’s canola because that’s cheaper and I don’t care. And it’s so much safer than petroleum-based fuels; you can put it out by sloshing the oil over the wick, and if you get a stable cup or glass, it’s not going to tip like a candle, and the flame’s not exposed at the top like a candle so you don’t brush against it.)

Gonna be cold again tonight, and then it’s hot as shit for the rest of the week, so I should go to bed early tonight and try to get a good night’s sleep while I can. My “health” app on my watch informed me I got 7 hours of sleep last night and that’s a huge percentage over my average and I should keep up the good work, champ! Usually I’m lucky to break six, and often don’t break five. So. 

oh no Dude’s nosy aunt has noticed the prepon

via http://ift.tt/2aHMGvE:
oh no Dude’s nosy aunt has noticed the preponderance of posts of me here this summer and is Concerned and messaging me to ask if I’ve permanently left town (and by extension, Dude) and if she’s messaging me that means she’s probably talked to half a dozen people about it and it is going to get back to Dude’s mother, for sure, and oh man. 

oh well. it’ll be a good laugh. I did write back right away. No, I haven’t moved here, I’m just hanging out here as much as I possibly can this summer. It’s okay, Aunt Jean. Don’t alert the media. 

sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post

via http://ift.tt/2aHoBmH:sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “well it’s almost Tuesday and I haven’t totally rewritten chapter 6…”

What a coincidence! I too have written approximately nothing in the past week. I mean, I have no schedule, or plans to post, or really any idea where my fic is going. Still. Fistbump of solidarity.

It’s worse because I’m almost-constantly thinking “oh there’s a good character note” “I should use that moment” “this is definitely applicable to that idea” “this is absolutely how I’m ending that scene” and then I sit down with fifteen spare minutes and I stare at the screen and have no idea what I was going to do. 

So it’s like revving in neutral, you know? Ugh. 

When you see this, share 3 lines from a WIP

via http://ift.tt/2aOuu4X:
I don’t get how long a line is so I just did a chunk, which I think everyone does now anyway. 

“Papa,” Shara cried, her face lighting up with a pure joy Kes had never seen before, and she dropped the bag she’d been holding and threw herself across the platform. Kes caught the bag out of midair because he’d anticipated the gesture, and so when he turned and saw Sento Bey for the first time, he did so with an armload of Shara’s belongings.

“Good catch,” Sento said, and his arms were full of Shara, which Kes thought was amusing enough to remark on.

“You too, sir,” he said, laughing, and it was easier to swallow down his jealousy– Shara had never, would never look at him like that– in the face of how brightly Sento was laughing.

Sometimes I get really insecure about Ideological Purity

via http://ift.tt/2aIVO3g:
Sometimes I get really insecure about Ideological Purity because I know I’m not smart enough / don’t have a long enough attention span to actually be able to maintain it for myself?

I don’t know how to express that better, because, and this is stupidly ironic given how many words I write in any given day, I actually sometimes have trouble describing what I mean?

Sometimes I feel like I maxed my stats in the intuitive/instinctive part of Creativity/Artistic Expression, and left myself absolutely nothing in Actual Interacting With The Real World.

How an epic-fic writer can have such a short attention span, I don’t know, but I can’t fucking complete a thought, and it’s maddening.

I’m not expressing it well at all, but. Let me try again. I feel like all my morality winds up gray because I lack the intellectual rigor to actually clearly delineate between Good and Bad the way that is generally accepted.

Is it intellectual rigor? I don’t know. I just know whatever it is I don’t have it. I’m like, doing really visually-uninteresting interpretive dances across minefields and I can’t tell whether the spectators are applauding or screaming, sometimes. Even if I could tell, would I be able to decide whether they were excited for my performance, alarmed at my potential demise, or excited at my potential demise while alarmed at my terrible performance? Would it matter? 

(Maybe everyone else is wrong, and are drawing their lines in the sand in inappropriate places. How do I tell?)

i always miss the best documentary shotsB-I-L just drove the tractor past the window with the two...

via http://ift.tt/2aWB4Wu:
i always miss the best documentary shots

B-I-L just drove the tractor past the window with the two young apprentices sitting on the flat trailer behind it

both are young women, early twenties, both were in brightly-colored t-shirts (one aqua, one pink), sitting cross-legged flat on the trailer, unconcerned by the bumpy ride and fast pace

one was browsing something on her smartphone as the tractor rolled by 

i only saw it for a flash but it was a phenomenal little image. 

ineptshieldmaid replied to your post:i always miss the

via http://ift.tt/2aCThps:
ineptshieldmaid replied to your post:i always miss the best documentary shots B-I-L…

Quiche

OH MY GOD OF COURSE

HOW COULD I NOT THINK OF THAT I AM AN IDIOT

yesss!!! *runs off*

The wedding my sister and I did flowers for last weekend. Er,...

via http://ift.tt/2aI3ctj:
The wedding my sister and I did flowers for last weekend. Er, the weekend before? 

Anyway. Pretty much the pinnacle of Pinterest-chic, so well-done you can’t find a single fault with it. 

And those flowers were all grown from seed on the farm. 

adeptus-astarteej: It’s really depressing how

via http://ift.tt/2bhdNxs:
adeptus-astarteej:

It’s really depressing how Labor Day has gone from “give laborers a day off” to “give white collar office workers and executives a day off but make retail laborers work so that executives can get a latte on their day off”

bomberqueen17: ineptshieldmaid replied to your post:i always miss the best documentary shots...

via http://ift.tt/2bhejf0:
bomberqueen17:

ineptshieldmaid replied to your post:i always miss the best documentary shots B-I-L…

Quiche

OH MY GOD OF COURSE

HOW COULD I NOT THINK OF THAT I AM AN IDIOT

yesss!!! *runs off*

i forgot quiches have pastry crusts, we have a non-carb eater. instead I made this thing called Turkish Eggs, which of course the farm manager was like, oh, i make that all the time, my mom taught it to me, it’s a traditional Middle Eastern dish, and he had some name for it that of course I couldn’t remember long enough to pronounce, and suggested feta and parsley for garnish, both of which the recipe I’d randomly Googled suggested. So like. Duh.

Also my sister had none of the spices I needed– who runs out of paprika– and Aaron had all of them, but it was too late to add them so they just wound up being kind of unflavored. But eggs and tomatoes do have intrinsic flavor so it was all right. 

Now I have to think, in the next twenty minutes, of something to make for dinner. Bonus, though, everyone eating dinner eats carbs and sugars, so. I can be more unfettered. 

Maybe I will make a quiche now… we’re egg farmers, after all. 

OH I have not linked to the farm blog here. For a while it was only me noodling about, but now my sister has started digitizing the wonderful newsletter the farm manager prints out and gives out with each week’s share. He includes relevant quotes, like this one: 

Most plants taste better when they’ve had to suffer a little. - Diana Kennedy

bachfan replied to your post:ineptshieldmaid replied to

via http://ift.tt/2bhuOrq:
bachfan replied to your post:ineptshieldmaid replied to your post:i always miss…

Shakshuka? It’s essentially eggs cooked in tomatoes, chili, onions, paprika, and cumin.

Yes! Shakshuka! 

If I don’t see a word written down, I haven’t a chance in hell of remembering it. 

seramarias replied to your post “ineptshieldmaid

via http://ift.tt/2bdzame:seramarias replied to your post “ineptshieldmaid replied to your post:i always miss the best…”

I’ve got a low-carb person, and we’ve made quiche successfully by oiling a pie tin, then powdering it with parmesan cheese to make a ‘crust’ for the rest of the quiche. It’s a little more delicate, but it eats just fine.

We just make frittata, and it’s become a thing that we have frittata every Thursday. Because that’s basically just a quiche only with no crust. So. I couldn’t do that on a Tuesday if Thursday is Frittata Day. 

I only have a little parmesan in the house. The only cheese we reliably stock in bulk for crew lunches is cheddar, and i doubt that’d work for the same purpose.

sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post

via http://ift.tt/2bdySvo:sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “well it’s almost…”

1.5K words is excellent. I get the revving in neutral thing, though. I’m just idling at the moment. I feel like I used to write pretty linearly, and now that I have no outside expectations I just write the fun scenes and then try to fill in around them. Which I do not recommend as a strategy for a strong, cohesive story. Eh, anyway, good morning, and also it kinda sounds like the Dude’s aunt pulled a Norasol on you. So there’s that.

I sometimes do that, with the fun scenes and then getting stuck on the fill-in. In fact I do that a whole lot. I surely do not recommend it, no. I’m in that state currently with the end of Home Out In The Wind– I got so exhausted I did that really carelessly here at the end and the whole thing is so badly structured and I really don’t think there’s a single bit of chapter 6 I can reuse. It’s all got to be rebuilt and I can only salvage occasional phrases and premises, but the scenes as written just won’t work at all even rearranged. Sigh. 

I don’t think she pulled a Norasol? She’s not nearly well-informed enough to do so; I don’t think Dude’s spoken to her in a year or more. Not because they’re fighting, they’re just really not close. She just gave me something to laughingly text Dude about. And then get slightly freaked-out, because he didn’t text back. But I figured he had his phone in the other room, and I was right when he eventually did text back. But i had a moment, where I was like, Does Aunt Medusa Know Something I Don’t.

No, as it happens, but. It’s become a running family joke that Dude’s mother hears about his life achievements from the newspaper, not from him. (He used to work for a newspaper. Like, uh, ten years ago. It’s an old joke.)