progress

You know what helps my concentration? Distractions

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Let me be more specific: I’m sitting at a little table at Starbucks. One of the homeless guys from the neighborhood comes in and sits about three feet from me (it’s a small place) at about two-o’clock from me.

He’s wearing flip flops and his feet are filthy and covered with sores. He has two bags with him full of random crap, and he can’t seem to decide where to sit. He moves to a table, leaves his bag there when he moves to a comfy chair, spends about five minutes throwing wooden stirrers onto the chair opposite one at a time, then picks them up and throws them on the floor, then picks them up again and throws them onto a table.

Me, I’m deliberately not looking at him. Not when he’s standing at a corner scratching his back on the wall, not when he’s letting his feet dangle over the arm of the chair, not at all. He’s much too close to me for us to look at each other without engaging, and once that starts I’m never going to get anything done.

So I kept my eyes on my laptop screen. I kept my hands on the keyboard. And I met my goal for the day. Now I have to get a couple things done around the apartment and write enough to make yesterday’s goal, too. (eta: Done)

Everyone Loves Blue Dog

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… is done.

I’ll email if to my agent when I get home. Since she’s going to get a fresh read of it from another agent, I imagine I’ll have more notes soon. And I’m not sure if my editor wants this version or wants to wait until I execute notes from this new read.

But it’s 5:30 pm, and I haven’t eaten a bite since six am. I’m just been working and pushing and doing on this thing all day. (And hanging out a Flycon 2009.)

Deadline, schmedline. I’m taking tomorrow off.

And… it’s been emailed to my agent. Goodbye, book! Have a nice long trip!

Skip this post if you hate Valentines Day

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But first of all, I met today’s goal and made up the words I missed on Wednesday. The book is finally hitting its stride, thank Pikachu. Now, if only I hadn’t put in a bunch of exposition that was basically a repeat of 30 pages before…

I hate exposition.

Also: it’s Love Day. I got up at 4:30 to make Salad Eater the ginger pear scones she requested. I’d mixed the dry ingredients last night and wrapped her gift, too (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). No flowers this year. That was an expensive book.

Unfortunately, I left to write today’s pages before she woke up, so her Love Day gifts were sitting on the table waiting for her. It would have been nicer if I was there, but it didn’t happen.

Time to collect my library books and go home.

Something disturbing I just realized

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Annoying WordPress has a word counter at the bottom of this “Add New Post” window, telling me how long my posts are. First, sorry for being long-winded.

Second, that previous political post was over 500 words long, and I wrote it in about 20 minutes here at my desk.

Why is that disturbing? Because on days that I work my day job, my daily writing goal is a measly 500 words. I have about an hour, hour and fifteen minutes to hit that goal.

And sometimes I don’t make it. Cripes, it’s not the typing that’s hard, it’s focus and knowing what comes next in the story. If I could manage that, I’d be way, way more productive.

I need to come to my work more prepared.

It’s been a while since I talked about politics here

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I never even commented on Daschele’s withdrawal from the health care reform fight, even though the scandals he was facing seemed fairly minor and his loss hurt our chances of seeing decent health care reform in this country.

But I do want to post about two things, quickly. First, I hope everyone takes a couple minutes to read this op-ed in the Washington Post. It’s co-written by Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists in recent years who publicly warned of the financial crash that hit us months ago.

He’s calling for the government to nationalize the banks put failing banks into receivorship. It’s worked in the past, and if the government acquires and then sells troubled assets after they aren’t so troubled any more, it would not be such a financial hardship on the tax payers.

It would also free up credit for businesses who are struggling to replace capital and reduce the size of institutions that are “too big to fail.” We really shouldn’t have those any more, and a little breathing space to let us regulate those would be welcome.

Check it out.

Next, I have leap frog over the Republican refusal to join Obama and the Dems on the stimulus package, bipartisanship, GOP discipline (message- and otherwise) enforced by hardcore conservative interests willing to put up ambitious conservative politicians in the upcoming primaries and talk about Betsy McCaughey.

In 1994, McCaughey was part of the political hit job against the Clinton health care reform plan. She wrote an article in which she said she read the whole thing and gave her thoughts–and stated that the plan would allow the federal government to block you from seeing a doctor of your choice.

This was reported widely by Republican opponents and in the press, and helped fuel public opposition to the bill. Nevermind that it was an outright lie. Clinton’s plan stated exactly the opposite. Explicitly.

Now she’s back, claiming that the stimulus bill has secret provisions that allow the federal government to decide what treatments you can get.

It’s all BS, but it’s all over Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the other usual suspects. See here for a small link farm (really more of a pea patch) of bloggers pointing out the outright deceptions in her remarks.

How does that rate a comment when the whole stimulus bill fight didn’t? Her lies this time around are an attempt to stifle means testing for medical treatment. What works? What doesn’t? What works best? What’s uselessly expensive? See, McCaughey is on the board of a medical device company, and works for a think tank funded by the pharmaceutical industry. She knows that one in five dollars in this country is spent on health care, and that a frightening percentage of that money is wasted on unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.

Very profitable unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.

It sounds crazy to say it, but some people think that gathering data on what treatments work best–saving lives–and which don’t is controversial. They’re afraid that letting Americans see the numbers will cut into their profits. And they’re right.

Watch out.

In happier news, I met my daily goal again today. I have a book to give my wife for VDay, and when I leave to write in the morning, I plan to have it waiting on the table for her along with a nice, fresh scone.

Cya.

Ugh.

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The crappy thing about buying a jacket from a thrift shop like Value Village, even a nice one, is that you might stick your hand in the pocket and pull out an old, yellowed fingernail clipping. Bleh.

My desktop computer went insane mid-comment yesterday. All I could type was Greek letters, math symbols and other crap. After a wasted hour and an increasingly bitter certitude that my computer had given up the ghost six months after my extended Applecare had run out, I discovered that it’s (almost certainly) a broken keyboard. Which means I will be stimulating the economy on my lunch hour.

I am having trouble sleeping and waking early to do my daily pages. I’m way behind on my schedule for Man Bites World, and it’s really bugging me. Then again, I always have trouble sleeping and waking at this time of year. Must do better, must do better, must do better.

And then, this morning I was riding the bus reading a book I should be enjoying much more than I am, feeling grouchy and inadequate as I head to a job I don’t much like but really really need, the bus tops the hill behind my house and I get a sudden vision.

Today is a rare clear winter’s day, and because I missed my morning bus, I was riding to work just as the sun came up. And in the time it took the bus to make a left hand turn, I caught a glimpse of the Olympic Mountains on the other side of the Sound, their snow caps pink from the rising sun. And just a few degrees above them was the full moon.

And it was beautiful.

Ginger ale and progress

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We opened the Alton Brown ginger ale at dinner tonight, and… yeah. There was no fizz, and I know it’s not because the recipe was flawed. It was because we don’t turn on the heat in our apartment. It’s always in the mid-50’s around here, and yeast really wants higher temps than that.

Still, as flat soda, it was pretty amazing–not very sweet, but the ginger flavor was fresh and sharp. I’ll try it again in the spring when things are warmer around here.

And I managed 1,800 words today, which is a hugely productive day for me. I’d love to be able to write 9K in four hours, the way some writers do, but no. I finished my 1.8K in four hours (and they were difficult words, too), and I’m glad. More tomorrow.

Man Bites World won’t start

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I’ve started Man Bites World a few times now, and it doesn’t work.

I should rephrase that. It hasn’t worked so far. It’s been a little frustrating because–as I’ve mentioned so many times around here–I have to give the book to my agent in July. That’s not a lot of time for me.

Anyway, I think I figured out why the opening doesn’t work. Tomorrow, I’m going to rustle myself out of bed before dawn and rush out to the Starbucks. With any luck, I’ll make a good start on this book.

I have a good feeling about this one.

Aaaaaannnnd, I’m going to try the LJ-cut again from my WordPress blog. If the cut shows up, there won’t be anything behind it.

testing testing.

The not-fun day

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I overslept this morning and missed my writing time. I’ll have to make it up tonight. Also, I’m at the day job. Also, I tweaked my back last night and now I’m walking around the office like igor.

Don’t expect much from me today, thanks.