author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Back to basics. Back to what the folks at AbsoluteWrite.com affectionately refer to as "my daily two hours of BIC".

BIC means "Butt In Chair." Two hours means exactly that. And daily is as simple and as scary as it sounds.

I figured I'd get back into that routine Tuesday evening on the train. Got my laptop charged up in the cafe car, and then from 7 PM until 9 PM, I sat in my coach seat and wrote. Or stared at the screen and thought, what the hell comes next? But mostly wrote.

And thought, "This is what I need to be doing every day."

I ain't gonna lie. It's a daunting thought. Daunting enough that for the rest of the week, including today, I found excuses not to BIC. Excuses like, "must sleep" and "yay! Home! Spend time with my sweetie!" and "Urrr... early..." and "Must dig up financial info for tax returns" and "Paying work first" and... and... and...

...and "What the hell am I going to do with over 3,000 words of new rough draft every day? I'll never get it all revised and publishable! Not to mention publishED."

Seriously. Those 3,339 words of "Little Beanie"? Two hours. That's all it took.

The combination of being a fast typist and a verbal thinker is its own source of writer's block. I feel a little like the leading lady in the I Love Lucy episode with all the chocolate. That conveyor belt is clicking away and producing lots and lots and lots of truffles. An Aladdin's cave full of truffles. More than I'll ever be able to package. Or eat. Ever.

Kinda scary. But no excuse for not producing all those metaphorical truffles. Especially not when I'm supposedly trying to pursue a successful career as a metaphorical chocolatier. And in the end, who doesn't like truffles, right?

(Well, I could take or leave 'em. I prefer salt-water taffy. Or those flaky little vienna wafer rolls. But still.)

Sometimes it sounds like I'm making myself a lot of work. You ever read The Neverending Story? Remember Bastian's debt to Fantastica? Every story you start, you have to finish. And if you spend two hours every day writing new material, how many stories is that?

Sometimes, though, I remember it also means I'm adding to the riches in Aladdin's cave. Two hours every day creating new material? Define prolific. Sometimes I feel rich.

So. Tomorrow morning. (Yes, on a Saturday. "Being a writer means you don't get weekends and holidays.") Tomorrow morning, 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM. Finish "Beanie"? Finish "Trilobyte"? Start something entirely different? Dunno. Whatever comes of it, my butt will be in that chair for two hours.

"Daily" has got to start somewhere.

Thunk - the sound of a 15,000-word RTF attachment hitting my editor's inbox at 8:00 AM on the morning of a much-extended (for reasons mostly to do with scheduling interviews) deadline morning.

Zzzzz - the sounds emanating from the bedroom shortly thereafter and for most of the day. Week, in fact. Most of the week. When I crash, I crash hard.

Whizz - the sound of the February 28 deadline for Shimmer's "Pirate" issue approaching with great velocity, in flagrant disregard for my state of crashiness.

Vroom! - Me, shifting into high-speed productivity mode with regard to that and everything else I'd temporaily shelved during the freelance project (a prospective freelance web design assignment, a continuing novel critique, and all sorts of fictioneering in addition to the short story.

...Better late than never, right?

Bonus terminology: Damn you, wench! And I mean that in the nicest possible way... - Me, discovering exactly what my friend had done when she said, "You know what? You should totally check out PuzzlePirates.com." Do not, as you value your own real-world productivity, go and do likewise.

OK, well, but if you do, drop me and email and tell me what handle you play on which ocean. I'll invite you to be one of me hearties. Arrr!

Signed,

Ninnybird (Cobalt)
Teshka (Midnight)
Millefleur (Viridian)

So from Dec 22 to Jan 2, I was on vacation; John and I were visiting the New Orleans-area family for the holidays. Which sort of explains that. And since our return I have been sick as the proverbial dog. Now, you'd think that lying in bed all day would present a perfect opportunity for writing, but there's still that being sick thing. Stronger, more determined wordsmiths than I have no doubt prevailed against such circumstances. I, personally, can't even seem to think straight at the moment. Sorry.

I think I'm at last on the upswing today, though. More later if I manage it.

By the way, thanks to the magic of BitTorrent, John and I are all caught up with our friends across the pond in watching all Doctor Who related things. Chez LeBoeuf-Little is no longer a spoiler-free zone. Yay!

Which is not to say that you should not visit the polls tomorrow. Not at all. You should totally go to the polls and VOTE. Really, few things are as depressing in this so-called democratic republic than the concept that a 20% turnout is considered high. Go vote! However, I will continue to whine about how much life will suck for me as I work the 14-hour day involved in running my home precinct's polling place. During a general election. With poll watchers telling me how to do my job.

And no laptop.

I am not allowed to bring my laptop! It is electronic. It has ports. It could potentially be used to hack into the electronic voting booth that I'll be running. So it's not allowed on the premises.

And for once I have nothing ready to knit.

*cry*

So given that work on the Nano-novel tomorrow will be a no-go, I prioritized it today. I brainstormed about how to throw pointier rocks at Gwen, who is up the tree of Being In Charge Of A Bookstore No One Will Shop At Because Of Suspicions Of Past Criminal Activity. She thinks she knows how to handle this. She is wrong! So wrong! Give me an hour, and I'll figure out why she's wrong. Something to do with digging up copies of her own books and discovering one of the missing children in it, I think. Also, I decided that the scene with 7-yr-old Gwen meeting the Bookwyrm, which I've written before, will be rewritten from the point of view of the talemouse, who will be amazed at seeing a story character travel to the place between stories.

Meanwhile, I plan to bring the short story along with me in hard copy tomorrow: critiqued copies, print-out of current work, and spiral notebook. Perhaps by the end of the day I'll have something ready to type up. I am so very sick of dragging this revision out.

I hate writing science fiction! It has to make sense! I am sitting here with pen and paper trying to decide what the timeline is for the plant virus to take effect, and how exactly Daphne catches it, and how--if she only contracts it once she gets to Lac Des Allemands--she and Aaron don't hear about it on TV what with people contracting it directly from the source before they even leave Kenner. Gahhh!

On second thought, that sort of logical mechanics isn't just a province of science fiction... I hate writing fiction! Fiction has to make sense! Why can't it all just be striking turns of phrase and smooth dialogue and stunning imagery? I hate having to make it make sense!

*sigh*

As for the other on-going project, I'm still behind schedule. About 20 words per day behind schedule. Which, multiplied by 26 remaining days, isn't so bad. But I have this sense of dread following me around, because I haven't done very much more than rewrite from memory things I've already written here and there in past years. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do when I use up that material and have to figure out exactly how the rest of the novel goes.

Maybe this weekend I can spend some time plotting and outlining. I still haven't played with yWriter's nifty Outliner machinery yet. Maybe I'll do that.

...does not denote a similar dearth of progress.

I'm getting stuff done over here. Since I get on a plane Saturday morning, you can imagine I'm just a tad stressed out. [Insert primal scream here] Once I manage to safely catch all the balls I'm juggling, I'll be back with More Bloggity. Meanwhile, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait. Sorry.

Well, let me at least leave you with something to read. Here you go: Stephen King's "Everything You Need To Know About Writing Successfully - In Ten Minutes." Enjoy!

Hullo. Not dead. About to collapse, however.

Have I mentioned what a horrible, horrible procrastinator I am? Yeah. Baaaad bad bad bad. Two months ago I met a work-for-hire deadline via a dire all-nighter enabling 15,000 words in 24 hours. Swore I'd never do that again. Next time I had a month to write two 15,000-word manuscripts, I'd be smarter and do a thousand words a day.

"Next time" would refer to the month ending about five minutes ago.

I, er, did it again.

*sigh*

At times like this I am grateful for having developed a solid relationship with an editor who seems to like the manuscripts I turn in. She's been pretty darn forgiving of my despicable last-minute-ness, even giving me sanity-saving deadline extensions here and there. Because she can evidently read my mind.

But I hate this. I totally hate the procrastinatory streak in me. It manifests as something like, I dunno, an actual-factual fear of the work, a Gods-damned phobia or something, and if I'm actually virtuous enough to try to start, my mind slides off the work like water off a greased tarp and I sorta fall into web-browsing or forum-loitering or just walking all over Gods-damned Boulder.

Yes. I have finally realized that my tendency to go cafe-hopping during a long day earmarked for writing comes from the subconscious recognition that I can't write while walking. I can knit while walking, oh yes indeed, but not write. Not non-fiction, anyway. Fiction, sure, I can brainstorm storylines, but non-fiction? Oh no. I get three sentences into the brainstorm and then I go all blank and start singing mindless tunes in the key of E minor.

And yet at the same time I get to feel virtuous whilst going for a 5K walk because by the time I get to Amante in North Boulder, hot damn! I'm gonna write! Yes indeedy! I am on my way to Being A Good Girl!

Then I get there, and I drink a Moriarti, rest my tired legs, and read blogs for the four hours allotted to the randomly generated wi-fi password printed on the little Qwest card.

So. There you go.

I am going to collapse now. The insane amount of writing done between ten last night and four this afternoon is matched only by the insanely little amount of sleep I got. So collapsing occurreth. Imminently.

When I wake up, there will be fiction doin's done. I owe a chapter 7 critique to one correspondent and story critiques to him and everyone who critted "Snowflakes". I owe everyone who critted either it or Golden Bridle the putting to use of their critiques. Revisin', we call that. And I need to get chapters 3 and 4 of Bridle ready for critique. And I need to read the stories of all my fellow Borderlands Boot Camp attendees. (Dude, I have totally paid my tuition for that weekend out of my work-for-hire manuscript earnings. I feel like suddenly I'm not lying when I put "WRITER" down on my tax returns.) And I need to crit a story from the local workshop I attend; that's due Wednesday. And I volunteered for yet another face-to-face critique session on an intriguing memoirish sort of treatise on storytelling whose previous version was very nifty indeed. That's due Monday after next. And I really ought to start a new draft of something, maybe the blue hallucinated angel story that's sorta growing out of the memory of an afterimage at Norwood and North Broadway. Hmm.

(Me? Overextend much? Naaahhhhh.... No worries, just a little bit every day until current projects are done and new projects spontaneously generate. You know.)

And then.

And then.

Then two more 15K work-for-hire manuscripts with a July 24 deadline. 1,100 words per day, starting Monday, will get me done by the time my plane leaves for New Orleans on July 22. I'll do this, dammit. I will.

So apparently my problems are a matter of table structure, not lost data. Whee.

Confession: I have been woefully bad at keeping myself educated as my ISP traveled upward through the MySQL versions over the years, and the tables I created back in the 3.23 days, when the default was ISAM, did not play well with the move to 4.1, where ISAM is deprecated and MyISAM is preferred. I ought to have converted them over, but I have been ignorant and did not know to do so. So to fix things, I think I need to be given access to the backups from earlier in the month so that I can insert the data into manually recreated MyISAM tables. Because I really don't want to make the support staff at my ISP endure the pain in the butt of taking care of it for me. Because it would be a big pain in the butt for them, and not one they're contracted for. They'll take it on out of the goodness of their hearts, which I only come to appreciate more and more as situations like this painfully educate me about MySQL programming--but they oughtn't to have to do so.

So we're still working on it. Hang in there, Story and Dream Vortex participants. All will be as it was before, give or take the last two weeks of Story additions.

Meanwhile, still no progress in the writing. It's damn hard to concentrate when your little web mini-empire (mwahahaha! empire) is lying in chunks around your ankles. Did you notice that my entire domain here went down today? Just a glitch, but on top of everything, seeing one of those slimy "Your Web Site Here!" pages show up instead of your blog can be a real downer. (OK, it wasn't all that slimy, as such pages go. But it did have that annoyingly ubiquitous list of search terms and all.) I've been playing a lot of mind-numbing puzzle games and hitting the "get new email" button in Thunderbird with great frequency. (Sorry, Comcast.)

Tomorrow, Sunday, I hope to improve my productivity. I have lots of notes scribbled all over "Putting Down Roots" and will email it tomorrow night, in whatever form I've got it into, to the Borderlands Writer's Boot Camp. So my motivation to get hopping on the rewrite is to avoid getting told what I already know is wrong with the story, and instead get told things about the story I didn't already know. Otherwise, what a waste of an enrollment fee it would be!

The laptop? Hard drive dead. Data gone.

The blog and other websites? Data also gone. Some tables just got irretrievably futzed during the upgrade. I'd restore them from my local backups, except... see above. Lost all data on laptop. The backups on the server also appear to be futzed.

So unless my ISP has backups I don't know about (waiting to hear about that now), I'm looking at a huge honking amount of data loss. I'm going to have to recreate a bunch of my writing database from memory and scratch. As for the other websites, they're just going to be gone. Sorry, dreamers and story participants. Your posts are quite probably kaput.

Once again, I urge everybody reading this to backup your data often! Daily, if possible! In multiple places!

*sigh*

The actual writing is safe, and I have a story I should be working on. Not to mention several other projects. So... off I go with heavy heart and inexorable purpose.

1. An upgrade to MySQL 4.1 has appeared to make all SELECT statements that JOIN tables from two different databases erroneous: Can't find file: 'manuscripts.MYI' (errno: 2) That's why you're seeing icky error messages up top the page and no manuscript titles in their blue boxes attached to each entry. I'm working on it.
2. My laptop died last night. At least, the OS installation appears hosed. I woke up this morning ready to dump all the hard drive data onto another computer, only to find I can't get to the hard drive on an Averatec 3200 Series laptop. Another trip to Computer Renaissance it is! (And maybe breakfast at LePeep's while I'm at it.)