Thursday, November 1, 2007

First day of NaNoWriMo : wordcount zero

Things to do list:
1) finish the handout for the 4 hr lecture I'll be doing on Saturday, for Survey of Medieval Arts, a class I have various philosophical issues with, right from the start, mostly related to the poor fit of SCA 'Arts' with either medieval or traditional understanding of 'arts'. Fortunately, Mark the Wonder Husband is scanning in pictures for me, in return for the following,
2) finish proofreading The Peel Affinity by Friday, ideally tonight so the pages can go back in time. This isn't too difficult, since the text has been gone over severely already, and I'm just a pair of relatively fresh eyes ('relatively' being one of the words I've been flagging, along with 'substantially' and 'virtually') picking up the odd typo or missing word. But it's slow and somewhat painstaking.
3) format Willow Knot draft two in SMF and make it an .rtf so that the disket (yes, archaic, I'm an old-fashioned sort) can convey the file from my laptop (Windows) to Mark's computer (BeOs) to be emailed to my computer (Ubuntu) because my floppy drive never works. And then I can send it to my lovely, lovely, deeply appreciated beta-readers.

Then I can fall into Nanowrimo with little joyful hungry cries. Or possibly cries of dismay. Sunday morning, I'm hoping.
There was a meeting of Victoria NaNo participants on the 28th, but I didn't make it, since I was busy writing Willow Knot. That may be ironic, I'm not quite sure. Then I missed Robert Wiersema's reading on the 30th, which was more annoying, because I'd been looking forward to that, where the first was more duty. It seems I'm becoming a hermit except for when people come to see me, or else my ability to remember dates is diminishing.

It's particularly kind of Mark to help with this course, given that he's been unofficially blacklisted by the local Ithra campus. But that's a long story, and I have to admit that sometimes I'd be just as happy to be blacklisted as well. But somehow I come across as sweet and inoffensive (the acceptable face of Mark).
Anyway, it's a pain to be toting the barge and lifting the bale for classes by myself here, when other campuses (campi?) want both of us. If two people whom I do respect and like hadn't asked me to teach this one, I would have begged off. I hope, for their sake, that I do a decent job of this, and they get something out of it beyond the required credit for a Lector Artis.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Peel Affinity! Is it a thriller about Emma Peel and that other avenger chap?

Avocado

Unknown said...

Good luck with NaNoWriMo -- I decided not to punish myself this year, so I'll watch your progress instead ;)

batgirl said...

Thanks, Cheryl - the way my progress is going you can probably catch a quick nap without missing any of it!
-Barbara