Thursday, March 01, 2018

Writing and Bubbles

Tuesday night was a writing night.  I wasted some time looking at the ephemeris I'd generated to work out exactly when the moons were full or new and came to the conclusion that I need to sit down and make a calendar that I cary around with me, because the tables are useful, but a little too detailed, which makes finding dates for the full or new moons difficult.  Also, it's easier to read the table on a larger screen than the iPad.

Then, of course, the keyboard started acting up -- it's had over five years of hard service between being carted everywhere in a shoulder-bag, and now the space bar and some of the keys in the " < > ? and ] area get stuck.  Having runonwordswithnospaces can really break the writing flow.  Bridging the keyboard over my knees seems to improve its performance, so I typed that way for a while (it's also the way I type when I'm in the car and the iPad is draped over the steering wheel).

I managed to pump out about1800 words in about a two hour period.  Mark loaned me his headphones, which really helped; there might have been a baby crying in the foyer where I was, but I'm not sure, because the phones blocked the sound and I was listening to Renaissance dance tunes from Germany, Italy, and England.   I went bace and forth between several scenes, and once again found myself telling Vance's back-story in the village of Perinth before he left for the capitol of Lampton.  I'd worked out how he'd do a spell . . .  and (d'oh!) I've just realized I need a good reason for the characters to not have a mundane locksmith make a copy of the key they've got.   

The down side of a long writing session is that my hands were a little sore when I woke up (some days are heavy typing days at work, too).  I'm not sure if it's from all the typing or if it's from the rainy weather we're having.  

The other day Mark discovered was the perfect morning for blowing bubbles -- the humidity and coldness and pre-dawn stillness made it so that the bubbles he blew stuck to the grass in the backyard for a good half and hour.  While he was blowing them he looked like one of those whimsical wonder-workers from a late 1980's painting.  In the next painting he'd be dusting and hanging up a ker-jillion stars.  In the painting after that he'd be ribbon dancing clouds into existence just it time for them to turn flamingo pink from a sunrise.  In the next, he'd be bringing a mountain pine martin a snack while surrounded by cardinals, blue jays, and tanagers.  


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