'Oooh!' I thought. 'I'm all finished 'n shit!' I thought. 'Surely this is it?' I thought without admitting it to man or beast.

It isn't.

Information from the crunching panel is trickling in.

Early returns are 85% very positive and 15% extremely intellectually challenging. Basically, I'm going to have to have a long sit-down with my brain and something akin to the following conversation:

Me: "Brain! Wake up!"
Brain: "Wmz..whu.. wha'? It wasn't me! The apricot did it! ...Oh. It's you again."
Me: "Yes. Get up. There's work."
Brain: "Ha ha. Very funny. Fuck off? Please? And wherever you fuck off to, please post back that nice computer game with all the orcs and goblins and crap. That should keep you occupied. Or, y'know. A piece of paper that says 'please turn over' on both sides. But the main thing is that you fuck off and leave me alone."
Me: "Sorry. Can't do that. Remember the book?"
Brain: [terse silence]
Me: "Okay, so you remember the book."
Brain: "Because it took a year to write."
Me: "Okay. But-"
Brain: "Along with as much work as you could get your grubby mitts on."
Me: "Yes. Yes, I know. But-"
Brain: "And two theatre parts."
Me: "Yes. But only in months that started with 'A'."
Brain: "And a hundred comedy gigs."
Me: "erm... yes. Brain..?"
Brain: "What?"
Me: "...are you mad at me?" silence "Ow. Ow! OW! Okay! Okay! Uncle! I give up! Stop the headache!"
Brain: [frosty silence]
Me: "...I'm sorry, ok? I may have been a little ... enthusiastic in exercising you in the last year or so. But I just have this one thing...? ...that's kinda important? Just this tiny little thing? One thing that will validate all the madness of the past year?"
Brain: [sighs wearily] All right. Fine. I'm up anyway. What is it?
Me: "Please synthesize comments from 2-10 people, edit the 340-page novel accordingly, fix all logical flaws and bring it up from merely 'exciting' to 'super-awesome'. Oh, and before Friday please."
Brain: "I hate you."

...apart from that, everything is hunky dory. And on that note I'm off. Toodles!

1. Franklin College has an organic food buffet for $7 that always includes nonfat FroYo. Today's flavor was Mounds Bar. Mm.

2. Rivers Cuomo wrote one of the songs on Adam Lambert's new album. As if I weren't already excited enough! His first single is so danceable! It's going on my workout mix.

3. I almost started crying while reading one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's love sonnets to my class. Predictably, it was "How do I love thee, let me count the ways..." Tomorrow is Tennyson's "Ulysses" and I fear I'll have the same problem.

4. My mental "happy place" is next summer's trip to Europe. Other than the Netherlands, I don't know where else I'm going. But I kind of want to travel about. For like a month. Why not--I have the summer off! I guess I'll need to save up more money, though.

5. Can we just HAVE GAY MARRIAGE RIGHTS NOW? What is the EFFING PROBLEM!?! GIVE IT.

It's done.

It's done and it's also edited and off to my crunching panel (Mom, Dad, my brother, Morag and Nick) plus a small selection of fantasy literature enthusiasts who represent the catchment area, if you will.

Time until the comments start to come back: hopefully around a week.

I went to work today without my laptop on my back. It felt weird, but good. Instead I took a notebook and started work on my next book, on the tube at 8am this morning. I'm actually going to do work to keep my mind off the work. Yay for increased productivity!

The book goes to the agent on November 14th or thereabouts. After that, all bets are off.

Here is how the latter part of my afternoon went:

Me: Okay, computer, I'm going to ask you to read this dataset of 700 observations, just like you've been doing all afternoon.
COMPUTER: ONE OBSERVATION FOUND.
Me: No, that's not right -- there are about 700 survey responses. Let's try this again, shall we?
COMPUTER: ONE OBSERVATION FOUND.
Me: Huh. *Scans code* Okay, there's absolutely nothing different that I can see -- what's wrong with you? *Tries again*
COMPUTER: ONE OBSERVATION FOUND.
Me: Read it! Read it! Read it! READ IT!!!!!!!!!
COMPUTER: ONE OBSERVATION FOUND.
Me: I am going to set you on fire and dance in your ashes.
COMPUTER: SEVEN HUNDRED OBSERVATIONS FOUND.
Me: Good computer.

So yeah, that was a frustrating period of time. Not to mention that I have this -- thing? This knot of muscle, in my shoulder. I've had it for years, and suspect it comes from using my right hand exclusively on a mouse/computer touchpad. It's not usually painful, but present and annoying; today, for whatever reason, it's kind of hot and achy. Maybe it's from shaking my fist at my computer. So that's annoying, and then I went to Target tonight to buy toilet bowl cleaner and discovered that certain brands (rhymes with "Whoreox") are advertising that their toilet bowl cleaners kill flu viruses. Which yes, fine, many flu viruses probably get deposited INTO toilets, but what I want to know is how the hell people are fetching them OUT. So I bought the other brand, because I refuse to accept toilets as a flu vector.

2nd draft of my first book, Swords of Good Men, finishes tomorrow. With any luck I'll do the significant rewrite needed for the last chapter as well.

It's been a ride. Now - to bed.

...has there ever been a case of a first-time writer who will find everything else to do before finishing the first novel, the ending of which is the single longest-living thing about the whole thing (with the men doing the thing in the thing near the place with the thing)? I'm reaching almost comical levels of procrastination here.

edit 01:30am No. It is doable. There's actually not that much left.

edit 02:24am That's big important thing that happens #1 out of the way. First whip-through is not bad. Look forward to polishing that thing. Onward! Roll on the ninjas! Roll on the pirates! Roll on the mutant walrus!*

edit 02:36am Slight super-important-plot-point problem fixed, rather elegantly too**. Pirates, ninjas, etc.

edit 03:00am Second big thing done with, more or less. I'm so tired I initially spelled 'second' as 'sedonc'. Which might be preferable. Django Reinhardt is keeping me sane. Is it illegal to drink tea at 3am?***

* My book contains no ninjas or mutant walruses. Maybe next time. Vikings, you could argue, are fairly pirate-y, in a less 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and more 'Bastards of the North Atlantic' kind of way. And writing this, I realize that I completely forgot THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING IN THE FUCKING BOOK. Maybe I should just go to sleep right now, abandon all pretense of finishing this before 16:00 tomorrow (1415-1430, realistically, with preferably 6ish hours of sleep) and try to do it better instead.
Ah sod.
** We shall see whether I agree with myself on that count in the morning, though. Caveat, Author!
*** I am officially punch-drunk. I think I might be coming up on 2.000 words today; the novel is reaching 88.000 words and will probably go over 90.000 words. When I started this I worried as to whether I had enough story.

When I said, you know.. 'today'...

I think I'll use my god-like powers to redefine the end of 'today' as 'when I go to sleep'.

That might not be a strategically sound move, but sod. Write more, I must.

Having taken the controversial decision to write from home today (saves money + 2 hours of travel + proves a point (aaagh - I'm a PaP!*)(*more on the PaPs at another point)), I'm now actually back on track.

Can't quite escape the feeling that chapter 10 is the worst one yet. Which is slightly less than optimal. It kind of needs to be the best one, doesn't it? In a constant leapfrog of 'Oh my god - how could this chapter possibly be more riveting than the last? It is - but I don't know how he does it! Weirdly named foreign author - please have my babies! I see your dubious face - please have my money instead!' - kind of way, doesn't it?

But fuckit.

I have decided to finish this novel in the next 8 hours.

(how's *that* for a sentence, by the way?)

If it means there'll need to be some serious editing later on, then so be it.

But this book ends today.

is reluctant, and remembers with fondness days of yore when he was only luctant.

Today, Saturday the 31st of October, marks the 1 year anniversary of my meeting with my literary agent, the pitching of an idea that I had at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe and me subsequently starting writing a novel, having not done anything like as committed ever before.

The 2nd draft of said novel is now nearly completed. When said draft gets completed, it will need revising, editing, sending out to my readers, then upon receiving it from them it will need another editing. Then it goes to the agent and I go do something else with my time for a while. Like cut down drastically on the sugar, start moving my lardy arse, enjoy the 10 gigs I've got lined up in November and basically get on with it.

but I FORGOT my livejournal password. FORGOT IT. Which is a really
ridiculous sign of how long it's been since I've logged on to this site.
And my ISP address is temporarily blocked due to my repeated attempts to
remember it. So I'm having to update from my email. I mean - this is
embarrassing.

But it's also a sign of how busy I've been, I suppose. After straightening
out my little case of mistaken identity last week, I'm finally working as a
salaried employee, with an office and everything. No more working from home
in my pajamas! Not only that, but I was hired to work on one specific
project; I'm now working on four. Which isn't a bad thing - they're all
interesting, and they're forcing me to brush off my somewhat dusty
statistical and programming skills. But I suddenly find myself with a lot
less time. Never mind checking gawker.com fourteen times a day -- now I
feel like I barely have time to send a personal email. Which is weird, but
kind of refreshing in a way. I have meetings! Deadlines! Projects! Phone
calls to East Africa! And I'm sure that in two weeks I'll be moaning about
how overworked I am and how I can't wait for a vacation, but for the moment,
I'm having fun :)