Sleep? Food? What are these things you speak of?

Since the move, I’ve been crazy busy with writing and writing-related things. Here’s the breakdown so far:

  1. Wrote five short stories for various anthologies (one accepted so far)
  2. Went at winter WIP with a machete, caused much carnage, on the final read-through now
  3. Started about 10 new WIPs and made a fresh to-do list
  4. Settled one one of the above as current WIP, wrote 10K over the weekend

By Sunday night I plan to be completely done with winter WIP and send it off to my best fangirl for her thoughts. After that 10K on the current WIP, I realized it wasn’t working as-is and went back with my machete and almost have it fixed up and ready to proceed. So more or less I’ve been working 16 hour days — though the second half of that is much more fun than the first lol. I shudder to think of the repair job I’m going to have to do on this one.

But I’ve got tunnel vision with my new to-do list, with something new for Loose Id waving frantically for my attention. I just need to quiet the other horny people in my imagination before I can get to work on the dorky couple and their comedy of errors.

Also looking forward to my annual getaway on PEI. Just over a week and I’ll be hitting the road with a carry-on and empty shopping bags. This is my fifth trip over so my itinerary is a mixture of things I’ve done before and stuff I’ve never done:

Shopping trip to Great Canadian Soap. My absolute must stop to this little farm for a stash of Doublemint soap and whipped shea butter cream. I end up with a shopping list a mile long because everyone I know wants me to bring them back some goodies.

The best beer in Canada can be found on PEI. Gahan Honey Wheat isn’t available in NS yet, so I always stock up. This year they’ve moved from the Gahan House restaurant to their own location with a retail shop, so there’s a beer glass and a bucket hat waiting for me.

According to Canadian Living, I can also get a damn good plate of fish & chips across the harbour bridges in Dartmouth, but does John’s Lunch of Dartmouth have Gahan battered fish? Didn’t think so. Ergo, to Cardigan for my foodgasm, TYVM.

As tempting as it was to actually book a cottage in PEI National Park, I settled for a great deal just outside. Why use the main road to get from point A to B when you can zip along the coast and do some fox-spotting along the way?

Since I won’t be traveling alone, I don’t think I’ll get a chance to do as much reading as I normally would but I’ll still be taking my Kobo with me so I can read more of Justine Elyot’s naughty and fun Confessions of a Kinky Wife. Dan might just ruin me for other men. Thank God I have it in ebook. My Mom went bonkers for 50 Shades when she read it and the potential for kinky book theft is higher than usual lately. I wouldn’t want to have to take down the woman who gave birth to me.

Finally sitting my butt down

The move is done. Three weeks of shuffling back and forth with a full back seat, stinking of pine cleaner and Windex, and stuffing my face with drive-thru meals has come to an end. Up next, vacation!

One thing that changed very quickly was the abandonment of the home office. Having a home office wasn’t my motivation for getting a larger place, it just so happened that I could get a bigger place for what was in my budget versus if I went to a different neighbourhood and rented a smaller place. I used the office sparingly in the weeks since I moved my desk in. I edited a few short stories, but otherwise my writing was done everywhere but the home office. So last night when I decided to swap the office and bedroom, I just left the desk in the bedroom and I like that just fine. I’m more productive in my little nook in the bedroom. The down side to this is I now need to furnish a spare bedroom.

So glad to be finally sorted, and getting things done. After two months of pretending it doesn’t exist, I cracked open my novella (or novel, depending on your definition) and got my mental weed whacker. Writing this story really taught me what kind of writer I am and what I need to do to be productive — start in the middle and build the story — but the consequences of this is a big manuscript of WTF.  Annoying on some level, but at the same time it feeds my compulsion to have something to fix and put together.

My Sexy Waterboy Story

Yeeeessss, you need a signature on that invoice?

By all means, come into my office and I’ll do it for you.

Say, do you remember that time you hobbled in here with a cast on your leg? Well, let me tell you a little secret …

This is what just went through my head as Water Boy made his delivery, because just as he appeared at my door I opened this post from Alison Tyler.

A Year at a Glance

Insomnia-induced exhaustion has brought me home for the day with a floaty head, and so I used my time to make a Tumblr about the last year living here in this hole. Some good stuff, some stupid stuff, all memorialized here:

http://thepervyhobbit.wordpress.com

Pretty pictures to come (and one not-so-pretty picture of me in a clay face mask)!

Here we go!

Repent! And watch Futurama while you still can!

I move in mere days. Well, kind of. I’m paid up at two places so I get to move the big stuff and then run back and forth for the little stuff. But that’s ok! Because it’s almost over, and I get my life back! I’ve been succeeding in getting some better sleep, and it’s been so long since I have been able to do that I had completely forgotten what the world looks like when one is well rested. Goals are less unattainable. Ideas in my head work. I stop seeing miniature elephants riding tricycles across my desk.

In the weeks leading up to the move, I’ve spent a lot of time putting the digital stuff together and in doing so getting insight into my processes. While I’m learning to appreciate the physical space more (especially when I realized how little I had in my current digs) I’ve also discovered that I’m a complete devotee when it comes to certain digital tools, so until I have things sorted out I leave you with some of the tools I have been using to get things back on track.

Computer

Scrivener — I don’t think I would have been able to get anything done with winter without Scrivener. The novella I was working on in the winter began in the middle, with one single scene and I just built the rest of the story around it. It’s a mess, but it’s done, and using Scrivener really helped that happen. I really have no use for some of the bells and whistles in Scrivener, but as a word processor it’s top notch. The WP turns into a corkboard with the click of a button, letting the user see an overview of all chapters and writing bits, and you can have your word count target right there in the text file. Watching the word count going from red to yellow and finally to green is a great motivator. Scrivener isn’t free, but anyone who can’t seem to get the hang of linear writing should download the trial and see how it works for them.

Clean Desktop – Apple kicked my ass. I don’t want a Mac, I’m perfectly happy with my cheap laptop, but my brain can’t handle anything that doesn’t look like my iPad or iPhone. So I’ve given my desktop a make-over an mimicked this by using huge honking icons. The bigger, the better! However, I’m also a digital hoarder, so I have a catch-all folder on my desktop. It serves no purpose to save a picture of a pug dressed like a flying monkey, or Hobo Joe, but it makes me feel better to have it. I just don’t need to see it.

desktop

Empty Folders & Flash Drives – I don’t save anything I want to keep on hard drives or  flash drives anymore. Noting in My Documents. I pay for online storage. It’s well worth it to know that if my computer bursts into flames Hobo Joe will be the only casualty. Why do I reject these physical means of storage? Two words: lost manuscript. Yes, I wrote a fucking book and saved it somewhere on something and I have no idea where it is. It’s possible it was on my old computer before it died, or was on a flash drive I accidentally bent in half, but I just don’t know.

A VGA cord – Like most people I have a laptop. I needed a second monitor, but I wasn’t going to pay for one. So I got a VGA cord and hooked that fucker up to the TV and laptop. Now I have a 32″ second monitor, which is pretty awesome when I need an image or something right in front of me while I frig around on the computer.

Web/Cloud

Springpad – It’s a more functional version of Pinterest. With Springpad, you can add lists, links, notes, music, and so on but keeps the corkboard format of Pinterest. I started using Springpad when I had trouble syncing with Evernote and lost a lot of good stuff. Also it syncs to iPhone and iPad, so I can have my stuff wherever I go.

springpad

Skydrive – Some people swear by Dropbox, but I prefer Skydrive. For one, extra storage is cheaper than at Dropbox. A lot of people cite that security is better at Dropbox than Skydrive, but I don’t need a lot of security. No one is trying to steal my porny manuscripts, so I’m content with my wads of space for an extra $10-25/year.

Dropbox – Ok, so I do use Dropbox when I have to. I use a few apps that sync to Dropbox and no where else. iWriter, for example, is a text-based word processor for the iPhone and iPad. Also, I have Scrivener synced to Dropbox.

Evernote – I don’t use Evernote for much of anything anymore except for writing prompts. Some folks swear by Evernote, but I never got into it too heavily.

Instapaper – I initially planned to use this as a way to read blogs, but I basically use it for bookmarking now. At work, on my phone or tablet, I will just add things to Instapaper and go back to them. In short, I use this as a porn dump from my phone.

Simplenote – This is where I put calls for submission I stumble across. Only calls for submission!

(Of course, a lot of the cloud services I use also have mobile apps with varying degrees of usefulness.)

Mobile

Turboscan – As a lot of writers are, I am occasionally struck with the fever to write by hand. This is where Turboscan comes in. You open the app and take a picture of your document, turn it into a PDF, and discard the note. It lets me go old school without having to put up with the clutter.

Pages (or a decent mobile word processor) – I don’t think I could ever finish a book on my tablet, but I’ve written a few shorts (Two Man Job from Sudden Sex was written on my blackberry).  I can then send my work to Skydrive, Dropbox or another cloud service.

Index Card – All this app does is create a virtual cork board. I use this mostly for time management.

So that’s my digital life. Much more effective than a file cabinet, and mostly impervious to fire and flood … and definitely makes this move much easier, since all of this can be transported in a good laptop bag.