Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I Had A Title For This

AlyneGarden2_001 While my Second Life avatar ponders this majestic garden (click picture to embiggen) I ponder the state of the afteroon. Ninety-two degrees, possible thundershowers according to AOL weather, but the sun is blazing. DH is also home and a day sleeper on days off after a busy shift, so to keep things quiet for him and to keep pale-skinned and heat-sensitive me from roasting, I seek out air conditioned venues on such afternoons.

I had a blog topic all ready to go when I opened this window, and it made sense at the time. It even tied into the choice of picture, but can I remember it now? Not a bit of it. I'm going to blame the heat, or maybe the humidity. Whichever one of them is making my brain wonky, could they please stop? Either way, I'm going to go with what I've got. At the moment, that's A) refreshing the selections on my mp3 player, and B) writing. Also putting away the laundry, but nobody wants to hear about that.

My morning was spent mastering the table function in Word, no mean feat for someone who regularly transposes numbers. I had to, though, because getting all my characters' vital information in one place means I do not have to sift through different drafts of the ms in search of said information when I need to check one thing before moving forward. Also because I am a special, special princess and all the character charts I had seen left me feeling like A) I had never met the characters I know better than my own family, because I couldn't think of a single thing to put in the helpfully labelled blanks and B) they left off important things like the character's theme song.

So, with the help of a more-technically-savvy-than-me writer friend, I set about modifying the modified character study (see what she...um...they, as I don't know who originally used the term "study" instead of "chart" did there?) to a format that would tell me what I needed to know, at a glance. Instead of being a chore, this was -dare I say it?- fun. There aren't blanks to fill in, not as such, but expandable boxes that will adjust their size to contain whatever verbose answers to the questions I've posed. Big surprise, but I get talky even with myself. Creating the tables took me the entire morning, and I only got the chance to fill in a few of them for my hero, but it felt right. Best part? I get to do more of it tomorrow. Or later tonight if I can't resist the urge to slip away from sleeping DH and sneak off to the keyboard.

There's reading to be done as well, as I have both my ereader and a paper book crooking their fingers at me, and trust me, if I hadn't been able to snag a seat near an outlet, my nose would have been deep in a reread of Pale Moon Rider by Marsha Canham (delicious highwayman story.) I already know that her Pirate Wolf duet-that-is-now-a-trilogy will be next, but by the time I reminded myself that I needed to reread the first two books, I was already ten pages into Pale Moon Rider, and queue forms to the left, thanks.

Either that or my first read of The Sinner by Margaret Mallory, the second in her Return of the Highlanders series. I liked the first book, The Guardian, as sixteenth century Highlanders are relevant to my interests. Big plus that the author's website has discussion questions, which means I must now make friends read these books so we can yak.

Only problem with wanting to settle in for a good evening's read (aside from the aforementioned laundry needing to be put away) is that our abode is currently comfy chair-less. The couch and I have reached a state of detente, the bedside lamp is on indefinite hiatus until we can get the wiring checked and as much as I love my ergonomic desk chair, it is not my first choice for reading in at hours at a stretch. I can fake semicomfy by sticking a pillow behind my back on the carpeted landing, especially good if I can aim the standing fan directly at myself, and really, what does it matter, because when I'm in the story, other things take a back seat.

All of which brings me to the fact that I have not chosen a default read option for this summer. Hm. Must let thhat one sort itself out. More on that later. Since this feels long winded even for me, I'm going to wrap for now and say goodnight. Time to rest so I can attack the keyboard anew in the morning. What will you be doing?

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