Tag Archives: Writing

October Blog Chain: Novelus Interruptus

Posted on October 2, 2008 | 13 comments

It’s time for another Absolute Write blog chain, and this time our fearless leader is Ralph at Neither Here Nor There.  He started us off with his post about the agony of working on the second draft of his novel in Of Anxieties, Frustrations and Self-Imposed Deadlines; if you haven’t read it, you should.  I’ll wait.

Tonight, I can only aspire to know Ralph’s pain.  I am thisclose to finishing the first draft of Meet the Larssons, the novel I’ve been working on since January 2.  I wrote something over 3,000 words yesterday alone; I finally called it a night out of sheer exhaustion sometime after 1am.  The draft is currently over 102,000 words long.

But I didn’t finish it.  I have at least two scenes left to go:  the final scene I’ve had in mind since I first hashed out a couple of pages of notes on January 2, and one scene to get me there. If I hadn’t spent all evening working on a brief, I might have finished it this evening.  As it is, I may not get any concentrated time to work on it until Monday, because the whole family is trekking out to New York for a wedding.  We leave tomorrow, and because we’ve got a box full of crazy with our names on it, we’re driving to the Catskills in one day.  Road trip!  So I probably won’t finish until next week, which is a little frustrating.

Not as frustrating as it’s going to be restructuring MTL after I type “The End,” though.  Those few pages of notes are the only outline I’ve ever done for this book, and it shows.  If I’d spent more time outlining, I might not have had to do as much reworking in the second draft; I might even have bee able to skip the second draft altogether and go straight to the third draft, editing words one at a time instead of moving around entire chapters.  On the other hand, I might never have started writing the novel at all, and just figuratively tossed those notes into the same cluttered drawer with all of my other unfinished (or unstarted) ideas for novels or stories over the past 15 years.

Once I have this novel under my belt, though, when I start my next one — and there will be a next one — I expect to spend a lot more time outlining it, maybe chapter by chapter.  I have always thought of myself as an organic writer as opposed to an outliner, but I think I’ll try it the other way to see if it works better.

So what about you, Sassee?  Do you outline, or do you just start throwing words onto the page?

Neither Here Nor There
Unfocused Me
A Blog, I Has One
Headdesk
Spittin’ Out Words Like a Llama
Life in Scribbletown
Organized Chaos
South Asia Fair
Spynotes
Corvette — An American Dream
Christian Woman

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Fall Sunday Stats #1: How To Get Run Over By a Car and Walk Away.

Posted on September 28, 2008 | 7 comments

Yes, I was run over by a car this week, but it was the good kind of getting run over by a car.  Yes, I walked away.  I still don’t recommend it.

It’s autumn in Chicago, and we’re going apple-picking today if the weather holds.  We usually go in October, but as we looked at the calendar we realized that our weekends are pretty well booked until November; we’ll probably end up with a different variety of apples, which will be a nice change.  We’ll try to keep the haul down to about 50 pounds of apples this year.

Miles run today:  None.  Because, you know, I got run over by a car.  Here’s the story:  on Thursday, I was in California for a hearing, and the Senior Partner, our clients, the husband of one client, and I went out to lunch before the afternoon court appearance.  After lunch, the client’s husband (a very nice guy) pulled their car around to drive most of us to court (a couple of members of the group got into another client’s car).  The curb was too high to allow the passenger-side doors to open, so the client’s husband was asked to pull up a little, to where the curb was lower.  Unfortunately, at just that moment, I was on the driver’s side, with the back door open; my right foot was in the car and my left foot was on the street.  As he pulled up, the tire started riding up my heel and the back of my leg.  I let out a yell, he stopped the car, and after a moment’s confusion, backed it up and I hopped onto the sidewalk.

If he had gone another couple of inches, my achilles tendon probably would have snapped.  As it is, my ankle and heel hurt a LOT, but after a few minutes of icing the foot and a handful of Advil, I was queasy and shaken, but decided I would live and off we went to court.  When the hearing started, I was nauseated and light-headed, and I think I was in a little bit of shock, but by the end of it (three hours later), I was mostly back to normal, except that my foot hurt.  A lot.  The poor guy who had been driving the car felt so bad about it that he was in worse shape than I was.

Back in Chicago on Friday, I did see a doctor.  I don’t have the results of the x-rays yet, but based on how I’m feeling, I think it’s just bruised.  So no run today, but maybe as soon as Wednesday.

So, to sum up how to get run over and walk away:  as the car starts to roll over you, scream like Agnes Moorehead.  The person driving will probably stop.  Hope that helps.

Weather:  cool and overcast.  It’s supposed to be a sunny day, but it doesn’t look good.  We’ll have to give it a little more time before we decide whether to go to the orchard.

Words of Meet the Larssons written this week:  1,633, to a total of 97,727.  A definite decline in productivity, generally because of the travel.  I was gone from Tuesday to late Thursday night, the only time I wasn’t actively working was the flight home, and my foot hurt enough that I didn’t really feel as though I could concentrate.  No travel this week and no overwhelming deadlines, so I hope to get more done.  Instead, on the plane back to Chicago I read Tim Ferriss’s The Four-Hour Work Week, which has gotten a lot of press, good and bad.  Much of it is completely useless to me (as long as I’m working as a lawyer, I essentially get paid by the hour; a four-hour work week doesn’t really cut it), but I thought he had an interesting perspective.  The book made me think about some of the ways in which I do spend my time that is neither productive nor interesting, and reminded me that one of the benefits of my job is that the office schedule is somewhat flexible; I should take more advantage of that.  I blew off the chapters on internet-based reselling as creating an effortless income stream; what I did read of that section had the faint odor of the “easy money from real estate” books that were so popular not very long ago.  Maybe that works for some people, and don’t let me discourage you from giving it a try if you’re so inclined — the up front investment is certainly less than for buying homes out of foreclosure and rehabbing them; it’s just not for me.

Speaking of unproductive uses of my time, and of feeling queasy and light-headed, I made the mistake of checking the balance of my retirement account yesterday.  Good God.  It looks like Congress is going to work out the bailout, which I suppose is necessary.  Peter Bernstein has a good piece in today’s Times about the moral hazard inherent in any broad bailout scheme; rescuing an entire industry from its bad decisions about risk doesn’t exactly discourage people from taking similar risks in the future.  I’m afraid It’s going to take more than a little Advil and ice to recover from the truck that’s hit us this past year.

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TMI.

Posted on September 22, 2008 | 4 comments

I have two stories out on submission right now, to two different markets.  I sent “Dear Mr. President” out at the end of July to an online magazine; its submission guidelines say that writers should not expect a response for at least three months.  I hardly think about this story at all; I’ll start wondering about it if I don’t have a response in another month or so.

I sent TTB to a different market.  This outlet does not provide any guideline for response time; instead, it provides detailed statistics, like Duotrope, but counting every single submission and response.  I can check the numbers, and see that for short story submissions, they sent their most recent response on Sunday of last week, and the earliest story submitted that has not yet been rejected or accepted was submitted back in June; the average time for a rejection is just over a week, but the average time for acceptance is four months.

If I hit REFRESH, maybe the statistics will update.  Not this time, at least, not for responses, but four more short stories have been submitted since the last time I checked!  More competition!  Arg!

This is ridiculous.  When the editor has reviewed my story, and has made a decision about my story, I’ll get an email.  Finding out when the last response was sent out to someone doesn’t tell me anything, because if I don’t have an email, then it wasn’t sent to me.

REFRESH.  Nothing.  Crap.

Thanks for the detailed statistics.  In addition to getting me to push that damn button like a lab rat trying for cheese, those numbers have given me something worse than a jammed right index finger (REFRESH – ow!):  hope.  See, the average rejection time is just over a week.  The editor has had TTB for 24 days.  So is TTB an outlier?  So damn long that it takes a while to turn it down?  Or is it possible that it’s been shortlisted, and weighed against the other stories coming in?

REFRESH.  Ow.  Nothing.  Crap.

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Summer Sunday Stats #7: The Real Last Summer Sunday.

Posted on September 21, 2008 | 1 comment

No wonder it’s such a nice day:  it’s still summer.  The autumnal equinox is tomorrow.  D’oh.  (If you didn’t see Summer Sunday Stats #6A or Summer Sunday Stats #6B, then this probably doesn’t mean anything to you; carry on, then.)

Miles run:  8.46 miles in 1:22:48.  Nice and slooooow.  I took the entire week off after the Chicago Half Marathon — I didn’t run a step between last Sunday and today, except to catch the train.  While I never got full out sick after my last post, but I’ve definitely been fighting off a cold, so I took it easy this morning.  I’m glad I went out, though; it’s a beautiful day, warm and sunny but not too hot.

What was playing on my iPod during my run:  absolutely nothing.  I couldn’t find my arm band case for the iPod, so I went without it.  Just as well, as it turns out.

Words of Meet the Larssons written this week:  3,146, for a total of 96,094, which sounds pretty good to me considering the week I had.  Not included in that total is the 600 words of notes I typed out last night and this morning with ideas for revisions when I’m ready for the second draft.  I hit a point this week where I can see the end of the story, and my vague feelings of dissatisfaction with the story arc began to really coalesce.  Last night, I finally realized what was wrong with it, and by this morning, I started to figure out how I needed to change the story to save it.  By the time I left for my run, I had a pretty good idea as to what the revised structure of the novel would be, but I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of rewriting I thought it would require.  I thought I might have to throw out as much as half of what I’ve written — not just edit or revise or even rewrite, but throw 50,000 words completely out the window.

When I couldn’t find my iPod case, I just grabbed my keys and left.  I thought I could use the time to think through the changes I’d need to make.  Instead, in the course of an 80-minute run, I figured out that most of what I thought I’d have to pitch could actually be salvaged, that the biggest problem with the story so far isn’t what I’ve written, but the order in which I’ve written it.  The same events — hell, even the same dialogue in several scenes — which are just vignettes the way I’ve written them in the first draft, which add nothing to the plot or just serve to make the characters jump through particular hoops on their way to a predetermined end, would make perfect sense and build the dramatic tension if only they appeared in a different order.  Instead of shitcanning 50,000 words, I would need to cut maybe 10,000 words completely, and revise or rewrite another 10,000 while changing the order in which those scenes appear.  Then I’ve got ideas for probably another 10,000 to 20,000 words of new scenes on top of that, to tie the new structure together. None of this excuses me from finishing the first draft, but I feel a lot better knowing where the revisions are going to go.

It does, however, tell me that NaNoWriMo is not an option this year.  I’m going to finish the first draft of MTL in the next three weeks or so, certainly by Halloween, but I think probably before then.  Then I’m going to take a few weeks away from it and work on getting one or two more short stories finished, cleaned up, and submitted.  By mid-November or so, I’d like to get cracking on making these revisions.  If at all possible, I’d like to have the revised draft done by the end of January (I’d really like to have it done by the end of the year, but I can’t see how that’s realistic).  That’s not the submission draft, but by the end of it I should have fixed any big problems with the book.

What about the marathon?  The jury’s still out on that, but I’m skeptical about my ability to take that much time off of work.

Gotta go – it’s official homework time for the kids, and the weekend is the only time I get to help.

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Summer Sunday Stats #6B: The Last Summer Sunday.

Posted on September 14, 2008 | 2 comments

This is the second part of a two-part Summer Sunday Stats post.  This post will make more sense if you read Summer Sunday Stats #6A first.

Today’s Chicago Half Marathon was the last meatspace race I’ve registered for this year, but I have one more virtual race to go:  The 3rd annual World Wide Half Marathon, part of the Phedippidations World Wide Festival of Races.  It’s self-timed, and the course isn’t USATF-certified, but the race directors do a great job building the excitement and even put together a e-goody-bag, and Steve prepares a special episode of Phedippidations with people cheering, which is great to listen to.  The race is October 11 and 12; each runner decides when and where to run his or her race, then post results to the website.  It’s a lot of fun, and there’s still time to register for the half marathon, 10K, or 5K races.

Moving off the running:

Words of Meet the Larssons written this week:  3,770 (92,948 total).  That’s more like it.  I managed — for the week, anyway — to stick to my pledge not to work on any other writing projects until the first draft of MTL is finished.  The draft will need a lot of work, but I think I’m on track to make my self-imposed Halloween deadline.

Other news:  We introduced the kids to Go Fish! yesterday, and Unfocused Girl to Clue, both of which went over big.  We were looking for something to do together on a rainy afternoon other than watch a movie; we’ve tried card games and board games before (Candyland, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O, a couple of others) without success, but it looks like the kids have finally gotten old enough to handle games with rules, which is great.

What a disaster of a weekend, weather-wise.  Even here in the city, not far from our house, the Chicago River has flooded hundreds of homes and streets with waist-high water.  Unfocused Girl’s school is closed tomorrow, thankfully just because of flooding in the streets and not in the school itself.  We’ve been lucky to have had only a trickle of water in the basement, back by the mechanicals.  Anything I can clean up with a few towels qualifies as a minor problem.

Finally, I came across a couple of interesting writing blogs this week, which I’ve added to the “On Writing” section of my blogroll on the sidebar.  Chicago-area mystery writer J.A. Konrath writes A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, which focuses on marketing yourself (and your book) and the business side of being a writer.  Scott William Carter, whose own first novel is coming out soon, writes The First Book, with interviews of authors whose first novels are about to be or have recently been published.  If you’re a wannabe novelist looking for inspiration, you might want to check these out.

There’s more I meant to put into this post, but I’m exhausted and I’ve forgotten what it was.  If I remember it and I have the energy, I’ll post an epilogue.

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Summer Sunday Stats #5: Marathon or NaNo?

Posted on September 7, 2008 | 2 comments

Summer Sunday Stats for today — only one more weekend to go before I’m doing Fall Sunday Stats.  Depressing thought.

Miles run:  12.19 in 1:37:11.  It was the same run as last weekend, but oh, so much better.  The training is starting to pay off, I got more sleep on Saturday night, and I had time to eat breakfast before my run.  My left hamstring started to ache at about mile 8, and my right hip bothered me a bit starting around mile 9, but they slowed me down much less than I would have expected, and the ice bath I take after these long runs goes a long way to dealing with the little aches and pains.  Yes, I said ice bath.  Try it, you’ll stop screaming eventually.

Only one more week until the Chicago Half Marathon, and I’m feeling like maybe it won’t be a complete disaster.  Even if I don’t finish with a better time than I did last year, if it feels less like a death march, I’ll be happy.

Weather:  beautiful, sunny, not too warm.  Can’t beat Chicago in September.

What I was listening to on my iPod:  Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing #59 (Clarion Graudates), and Phedippidations #151 (Starting a Beatless Heart).  I only started listening to AISFP in the last few weeks, and so far, I like what I hear.  Shawn and Sam get some great interviews with well-known writers as well as up-and-comers, like the graduates of this summer’s Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop.  I always wanted to do Clarion when I was writing science fiction in high school and college.  Obviously, I’m not in a position now to drop everything and go to San Diego for six weeks; I’d do better to find a local critique group of people I enjoy working with.  I attended one meeting of a crit group a few months ago, but I’ve been traveling so much I haven’t been able to go back.  I’m not sure that group is for me, anyway; it just didn’t click.  I should probably look for another one.  I might do better with an online crit group, too; I’m not really excited about another thing that gets me home late and causes me to miss the kids’ bedtime.

Happily, Steve Runner, the host of Phedippidations, has decided to go back to a weekly schedule after several months of only podcasting once every three weeks or so.  Fdip was the first podcast I ever subscribed to, and Steve has been a great running buddy, even though we’ve never met.  I’m glad he’s back at it on a regular schedule.

Words written of Meet the Larssons:  1402.  Certainly an improvement over last week, but here’s the problem:  while I wrote 1402 words of MTL, I wrote 3902 words of “Secretary-General,” the short story I started 10 days ago.  I need to be better disciplined about this.  I’ve decided I have to — have to — finish the first draft of the novel by Halloween, for any number of reasons, from needing to end it so I can put it down for a while and come back to the revision process fresh, to the fact that I’m starting to lose track of the plot because I’ve been working on it for so long, to wanting to possibly do NaNo this year (more on that in a moment).  If I’m going to get MTL put to bed in seven weeks, I need to put other writing projects away and not create any new ones.  Any bright, shiny ideas that come to me in the next seven weeks will get put into a box labeled “Do Not Open Until November 1.”  They can come out to play then.  SG is temptingly close to finished, but it isn’t coming out the way I wanted it, anyway, so I’m going to put it aside until after Nov. 1 (after Nov. 30, if I end up doing NaNo).  A few days ago, my daughter and I realized that she was reading five books at the same time (four novels, one math book); I told her she could do what she liked, but she might get more out of them if she finished a couple before she added any new ones to the mix.  She finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this afternoon, and has been making good progress on a couple of the others without starting anything new, so I guess she took my advice.  I should do the same with what I’m writing.

Marathon or NaNoWriMo?  That is the question.  I had no plans to run a marathon this year; instead, I started the New Year planning to enter NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month — in November, after having worked on my writing chops by starting this blog and writing a couple of short stories.  Instead,  I’ve written two short stories and gotten nearly 90,000 words into a novel, which I will finish before NaNo starts on November 1.

At the same time, I’ve been running better than I expected this year.  I managed to keep my long runs going — not perfectly consistently, but well enough — through the spring and summer, and now I’m heading into the fall with a pretty good base.  I would still just be thinking about the Chicago Half Marathon next weekend and the World Wide Half Marathon in October, since there’s no way I’d be ready for an October marathon (Chicago or Milwaukee), but then I found out about the new marathon in the beach town where we spend our summer vacation.  It isn’t until the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and instead of the craziness of the Chicago Marathon, this would be a small, friendly race; Mrs. Unfocused and the kids would be able to see me at different points of the race without having to wonder if they missed me in the crowd, and I’d be able to see them.  I’ve never traveled for a race before, but the whole family could go, and we’d have a place to stay.

But, but, but.  It would mean missing several days of work just for travel, and having to decide whether to rush home to be in the office for Thanksgiving week or just blowing it off and staying at the beach for some or all of the week.  Even if I could swing it, I’m just not sure I should.

And finally, I think the two things are mutually exclusive.  If I decide to do the marathon, November will be almost all taper, so it isn’t that the running would interfere so much with the writing.  Instead, it would be the travel and the associated stress. I don’t think I could possibly crank out 1700 words a day for the month if I’ve got an out-of-town marathon scheduled.

Plus, I know what I’m like in the weeks before a marathon — I’m a paranoid, hypochondriacal wreck, obsessing about every bruise, bump, sniffle, or twinge.  The weeks before a marathon are not a fun time to be Mrs. Unfocused.  From what I’ve read about other people’s experiences with NaNo, there are certain similarities — the NaNo participant becomes obsessive about the writing, muttering about the novel, failing to provide any domestic assistance, sleeping only fitfully, etc., etc.  Again, not a fun time to be Mrs. Unfocused.  I have no desire to be kicked out of the house and forced to move into the YMCA for being a self-absorbed, germophobic, hypochondriac chained to my laptop who never sleeps and constantly talks about people who don’t exist; that’s not a bad description of me now, and if it got worse, she’d be well within her rights to change the locks.

I’ve finished four Chicago Marathons (started a fifth, but had to drop out due to injury).  I’ve never done NaNoWriMo, but the point of NaNo is to get you off your butt and make you write; I’m writing now.

So, marathon or NaNo?  I haven’t decided yet; I think I still have a few weeks.  But it isn’t going to be easy.

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Summer Sunday Stats #4: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Posted on September 1, 2008 | 6 comments

Hope you’re having a good long weekend.  We’ve been pretty laid back here at Stately Unfocused Manor; we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday, and mostly just hung out yesterday.  School started for Junior on Wednesday; Unfocused Girl starts at her new school (now with extra distance from home!) tomorrow.  I can’t believe she’s going into second grade.  I hope the new school works out — it’s a new building with great facilities, but a school isn’t just a building, and it’s going to be a big change from the Montessori program we’re used to.

Miles run:  11.75 miles, in 1:51:08.  I took it slowly, because I’ve added a lot of weekday miles lately and was kind of wiped, and because it was really hot — I finished my entire water bottle at the turnaround point.  The important thing was to get my long run mileage up from 10 — the Chicago Half Marathon is in two weeks, and while I’m not looking to set a PR, I don’t want to feel as unprepared as I did last year.

Weather:  Sunny and hot. ‘Nuff said.

What was on my iPod:  J.C. Hutchins’s Ultracreatives Interview #4, C.C Chapman’s Accident Hash #273, and Black Lab’s album See the Sun.

How’s the writing going?  I’m so glad you asked.  I wrote 899 words of Meet the Larssons (87,776 and counting).  I was distracted by the Democratic National Convention (anyone remember that?  Denver?  Speeches?  Anyone?  Bueller?) and by a short story that wanted to be written.  I’m trying to keep the short story — I don’t have a good working title for it yet, so let’s just call it “Secretary-General” for now — to under 5,000 words, which would fit within the guidelines of most s.f. markets, and is about right for the story anyway.  So far, it’s at 3,656 words, all written this week.  I probably wrote the last 2,000 words on Friday; the Mrs. went to bed early, and I stayed up late.  I know that I shouldn’t let myself get distracted by other ideas while I’m working on the novel, that I should just write them down and get back to work on MTL until the first draft is done.  I try, I really do, although that kind of mental discipline doesn’t come easily to me.  When an idea is just an idea, I can put it aside; I email myself a note about it, with “Idea” in the subject line, and I can forget about it.  Sometimes, though, like TTB and now SG, I get more than just an idea, I get the whole story in my head, and in order to get it down so I don’t lose it, I essentially have to just write the damn thing.  It doesn’t mean the story’s good, or really complete, but it does mean that I have trouble focusing on anything else until I get it down.

Rather than comment on the selection of Gov. Palin as McCain’s running mate (is he pandering to the religious right or to Hillary voters?  It’s a mystery!) or Hurricane Gustav’s advance on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, since those topics are being more thoroughly hashed out elsewhere, I’ll leave you with the hysterical Large Hadron Rap:

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Another Rejection, Another Submission.

Posted on August 29, 2008 | 3 comments

That was a fast turnaround; TTB got its third rejection yesterday (no personal comments), less than 24 hours after it was submitted. I’ve sent it on to its next potential home already, which will probably have a somewhat longer turnaround time. Ah, well.  The Democratic National Convention played havoc with my writing this week, but at least I got the story out for consideration.  Twice.

So how about you?  What have you got outstanding, sitting in a slush pile?  How long has it been out there?

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Start the Clock, Again.

Posted on August 27, 2008 | 2 comments

I just submitted TTB to an online, semi-pro market; it’s just too long for most of the online markets that pay professional (SFWA) rates.  This particular market has published some terrific stories by new authors and award-winners; it is also known for a quick turnaround, so I’ll probably get an answer soon.

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Summer Sunday Stats #3

Posted on August 24, 2008 | 4 comments

Summer Sunday Stats for today:

Miles run today: 10.05, in 1:30:45. I could feel the exhaustion in my legs before I’d gone half a mile, and it never really got better. I think it was from the TKD test yesterday — we had class first, cut a little short but still 45 minutes, and then the test was surprisingly intense (I have a couple of nice bruises on my shin from the sparring). Still, it was the longest run I’ve had in four weeks, and with the Chicago Half Marathon in three weeks and the World Wide Half Marathon a few weeks after that (not to mention the marathon at the beach in late November, not that I’ve decided anything, but still…), I need to get the long runs in more consistently.

Weather: Sunny and warm, but not too hot, even though I didn’t leave the house until after 9am. As perfect a day for a long run as you could ask for in August in Chicago. It would have been even better if I’d worn sunscreen.

What was playing on my iPod: I Should Be Writing #96, followed by Phedippidations #147. Mur Lafferty (ISBW’s host) is promoting her very cool superhero novel, Playing for Keeps, which is being published by Swarm Press. It’s already available on Amazon.com, but the official launch date is tomorrow (Aug. 25), and she’s asking anyone interesting in buying it to order it tomorrow on Amazon to move it up the Amazon charts. Other podcasting novelists, such as Scott Sigler and Matthew Wayne Selznick, have done this kind of Amazon run with some success, so first thing tomorrow, you know I’ll be on Amazon ordering my copy of PFK. Mur podcast Playing for Keeps earlier this year, and also released it as a series of PDFs; if you want to see what you’ll be getting, Mur has re-released the PDF (along with a new bonus short story in the same universe) in time for the launch of the print edition, and you can get it here. I originally read PFK in the PDF version, and I’m looking forward to re-reading it as a bound book; I’m mentioning it here because I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from I Should Be Writing, and want to pay it back.

Words of Meet the Larssons written this week: 2,941 (up to today). That number surprised me when I added it up, but I think it’s correct. It’s been a decent week for writing, and I expect to get more done once school starts — on Wednesday for Unfocused Junior, and on Sept. 2 for Unfocused Girl (at The New School) — and they start going to bed at a reasonable hour again.

Other news: Junior’s cast came off on Friday! He’s a little nervous about the arm, but he has started wearing his Superman costume again, which is a terrific sign of normalcy (he wouldn’t wear it with the cast, because Superman would never have a broken arm, of course).

Finally, while I’m talking about new books, I should mention that John Scalzi’s latest sf novel, Zoe’s Tale, was released on Tuesday. I bought it that day and finished it Wednesday night, because Unfocused Girl was breathing down my neck to get her hands on it (those of you who know her will understand). It retells the events in his previous novel, The Last Colony, from the point of view of a 17-year-old girl, and is can be read as part of the Old Man’s War series or as a stand-alone novel. Not that Scalzi really needs my help promoting it, but I really enjoyed it. I think Unfocused Girl will, too, although now that she actually has it, she wants to finish the books she’s already working on first, including one of the Warriors novels and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; my guess is that she’ll finish the Warriors book and then start Zoe’s Tale, without worrying about finishing anything else, but we’ll see.

Unfocused Girl is working on her novel, The Adventure Friends and the Sword of Destiny, and just asked me if I was working on my novel, too.  That’s a reminder that instead of dragging out this post all afternoon, I should be writing.

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