7 days after 3 days

I didn't manage, as you may have noticed, to blog my 3-Day Novel writing. I tried so hard to stay offline that I could only allow myself to post a daily wordcount on Facebook. Which didn't prevent me finding random things I needed to research for 'inspiration' (excuses, excuses) online.

On the debit side, I went in tired and mentally unprepared, because somehow, with dealing entirely with the Transparent apple harvest, followed by the Living History Week, followed by a week of unpacking and washing linens after Living History Week, I hadn't given myself time to put together an outline, come up with an opening scene, or sketch a couple of characters.
What I did have was my brother's request / suggestion that I write about our childhood, particularly the summer of looking for ways into other worlds.
After a couple of days of muttering 'memoir is not story', I remembered a half-formed idea I'd had of conflict between a young man and his mother over her ebay habit:  she is attempting to recreate her childhood home or room so she can throw herself back in time to it.
As said at Viable Paradise, two half-baked ideas can make one good one. So I thought I'd go with mashing those up.
Three storylines:  a) present-day, from the son's POV, watching his mother's behaviour with some trepidation but not wanting to take away her independence. This because I'd wanted to write from a male POV, which I haven't done since Fold, I guess, and to keep some mystery going about what the old woman was up to (especially since I didn't know myself yet).
b) past, from the child's pov, she and her brother exploring the woods, playing make-believe, getting into petty crime with a neighbour boy, with the real-world worry of their own mother's health.
c) meta: an adventure story by the child, mixing in elements of her own life with bits from books she's read.

It was unexpectedly difficult to write autobiographical material. That old guideline of 'write what you know' has never rung particularly true to me, and not just because I write fantasy by preference. Sure, experiences like the death of parents, or miscarriage, or moving away, are things I draw on, but not necessarily directly. The emotions are mirrored, distorted, scraped off and re-applied.
The big obstacle to writing from life was knowing what to leave out. When I imagine a scene, I don't see every brick in the wall or even every character in the room. When I remember a scene, I remember too much of it, especially the before-and-after parts. What's relevant? I don't know, especially when writing something that's as improvisational as a 3-Day Novel.
Looking back, I wish I'd let my fingers run more often, and just filled the time with words, even if it did mean starting many hares that were never caught. But I was worrying, up until Monday late morning, about where the story was going, and whether I was building towards any kind of conclusion, let alone a satisfying one.  Monday morning I finally got an idea, and wrote the ending, so the rest of the day was bringing the story up to that ending.

I changed names and conflated incidents, but I'm not sure how I feel about other people seeing this one (says she, who sent it off to a panel of unknown judges on Tuesday). Rather, I don't mind strangers seeing it, but having written it sort of for my brother, I don't know how I'd feel about showing it to him. Whether the hesitation springs from the made-up parts or the from-memory parts, I'm not sure.

Ah well. Wordcounts: Midnight on Saturday, 6019 words; 11 pm on Sunday, 12019 words; midnight on Monday, 17400 words by Scrivener count.
ETA: Here's my banner, courtesy of the 3-Day rep. 

Beginning and ending were young Sandy's story, beginning PRIVATE! DO NOT LOOK! and ending To be continued...

Western skychair is up

 The boy and the girl came to the Island last weekend, for Mother's Day. Chris brought maple snap cookies, which as he said are not 'snaps' in the sense of gingersnaps, but round soft cookies, rather like the honey cookie from my tiny Evelyne Johnson Cookie Cookbook, but sweetened with maple syrup instead. Good choice for a Mother's Day present. (pause to get another cookie)
 I made a pan shortbread, using the method (but not the recipe) from Cooks Illustrated. Later I made a pan of chocolate shortbread, since I've finally found a recipe that doesn't involve icing sugar or cornstarch but still keeps its shape nicely. And because my child shouldn't leave my house without baked goods.

Besides baking cookies, Chris was helpfully tall, and hung up my basket chair to take advantage of the warm clear weather we had all weekend. Just gorgeous. And here is the very chair. 

 In the midst of lilac blossoms.

I always forget how brief blossom time is. The plum and pear have lost all their white blooms, and the Spartan tree's white is stained with brown edging. The Transparent was heaped with white froth for a little while, and now it's only green, with some powdery mildew mocking me. Also the horrible invisible caterpillars have done their usual trick of chewing through the bud stems so that the infant incipient apples fall away when you brush a hand over them.
 Chris and Shannon and I wandered about in the backyard and spent a little while finding the green caterpillars curled in folded leaves on the pear and apple trees, allowing one to squish them inside the leaf in a most satisfactory and sanitary way.

On the Sunday we hit the Times Colonist charity booksale, and I managed to restrain myself to two bags of books. Mark found another copy of the big book on stained glass that we have, so I can give it to my apprentice (yay!) and I found a few for Christmas and Twelfth Night presents as well as disposable reading.
Actually, I probably would have bought more books except that I went off with the kids for a late lunch at John's Place, which turned into a Mother's Day brunch (is it still brunch at 2 pm?) because the special omelette looked so enticing. Plus two free slices of cheesecake which worked out just right between three of us. And that took out at least 3 hours that I could have been using to go through the poor neglected hardcover fiction section, not to mention crafts and hobbies.
Just as well I suppose, though.

So it was a good weekend, though not as writing-productive as it could have been. I haven't posted as much this month because I'm trying to get that last burst of wordcount on, to get Storyline Two settled by the end of the month. I'm gearing up for the Kaiju Big Battel with the vampires, and I need to be sure who all will be there for it. Also I wrote a 'fen blow' into an earlier section to liven it up, and that means there needs to be a fen blow at the climax too. Argh. Well, more excitement, anyways.

I leave you with a picture of shortbread, this lot made with demerara sugar. 

one-step, two-step progress

Storyline Two chugs along, slower than I would like. I haven't hit the estimated-halfway-wordcount yet, which disappoints me, and the characters seem to talk an awful lot. And go to the pub to talk more.  Maybe this is wish-fulfilment on my part, since I'm supposed to not drink alcohol or carbonated beverages? They're drinking all the cider I can't have. Now I must infuse those scenes with all my thwarted passion!

I have to remember that my agent told me it doesn't have to be perfect, it's a first draft, and that she will want changes anyways, so a fine polish is not required.
And maybe Storyline Two won' t be 50k in the first draft. Maybe it will be 30k. I wonder how much wordage it needs to balance out the estimated 150k of Storyline One?

As far as actual measurable achievements go, I've frozen three bags of rhubarb and made a big batch of gluten-free cookies (this recipe from Make It Naked blog) for a birthday present. And on Thursday I did 15 real (not girly) pushups, and three sets of 22 crunches. Which is a lot of crunches.
With which I must be content for the moment.

amoeba book reproduces by fission

A strange and sudden freedom has fallen on me. As you may recall, I've been
struggling along with the ever-expanding expansion of Cost of Silver,
occasionally despairing of it ever being completely filled in, and repeatedly
extending my self-imposed deadlines. Well!
Over the last few weeks, I'd been comparing the almost-completely-filled-in
first 'half' with the much-left-to-go second 'half' and realising that if I did the
English Civil War justice, I was going to have a novel of at least 180k,
probably more.
Also that, although I had tightened the timeline considerably, there was
still a natural break between part one: fen-draining and vampires, and
part two: war and witchfinders.

As part one crept up past 90k, I began to believe that either I had two books
on my hands or I needed to stop expanding and start trimming. Yikes! But this
is what's great about having an agent who started as an editor. I emailed her
and asked 'how about I send you part one and
you can give me an opinion as to which way I should handle this?'
She said 'great, send it to me.'

After some Adventures in Formatting, followed by Adventures in Printing,
The Cost of Silver part one: The Astrologer's Death, 94k,* is on its way to
my agent for her considered advice.

And its author is on her way to Pennsylvania for two weeks of mostly-offline life.
I've brought actual paper notebooks and pens, so I'll still be writing. I'm planning
to mess around with a YA story idea riffing on the YA paranormal romance genre,
most easily summarised as 'Maenads at Band Camp". I think it will be fun.

Posting from Missoula Montana - goodnight!

*part two stands at 55k, which is a little under where the sketched-out first draft
stood when I started expanding it in January. So I must have written about 90k in
7 months. Maybe I really am a 'book a year' writer!

write while writing

Better wordcount on the Sunday, but only because of a late-night push.
7161 at lunch break (the total I'd wanted for the night before)
9525 at dinner break (Chinese takeout)
12012 at midnight.

In past years the pace has picked up on the last day, not only because of omg deadlien! but because I've had a clearer idea of the story-world and plot. The existence of an outline doesn't seem to affect this, though it isn't really a large enough data sample to be draw conclusions from. So we'll see if I can really knock off 8k today--it would be cool if I could.

Plot has not so much diverged from the outline as run parallel to it. Developments have come, but sometimes by different characters than those planned. The fellow who originally commissioned the ghost-snatching has turned out much nastier than first sketched, when he was just envious and malicious, and the girl protecting the ghost-carrier is a tougher customer.
The ghost who organises resistance among the mpd ghost-carriers (thank you, Nick Mamatas) isn't a union agitator this time, but an anarchist with a flair for rhetoric. With his very own nemesis, to be revealed.
And for the first time I don't have an ending, so I can't play my safe game of writing the ending while I'm about halfway through the story, and then writing up to it. I did have a lovely weepy self-sacrificial ending sketched in (okay, it was one line, but it was a pregnant-with-meaning sort of line) but that isn't going to work now.
Plus, I put a gun on the mantelpiece, in the form of an offhand comment (the Red Chamber is haunted, but nobody goes into the Green Chamber), and it has grown from a popgun to a howitzer in the last while, so it must be fired, or the whole wall will crumble under its weight.

At least I've both increased my wordcount from this time in previous years, and had as much of the sleepless experience as my decrepit old self can manage.

sheathe machete, take out hammer

I have cut just under 26k from a 129.5k manuscript. I'm torn between a euphoric sense of accomplishment, and grinding guilt that I let anybody--still less anybody I hold in affection--read 26 thousand unnecessary words.
I am so sorry. Really. I will never do it again. The gratitude part just makes me feel worse about it.

The next step is to re-enter at the first chapter and go through, pausing at the angle brackets to hammer home various elements that were scanted.

Clarifying the material culture of Nomency and environs--I hadn't considered that the default tech level for a fantasy is, say, 13th-15th c. Western Europe. Willow Knot, being a Grimm fairy tale (Grimm 11, Brother and Sister), is set in late 1700s Europe, roughly during Kleinstaaterei, something before the time the Grimms were collecting stories. This won't automatically occur to most readers, so I need to drop more clues about the material culture, earlier on.

Establishing that religion exists, without making religion a big honking issue. I've changed 'the Dear' to 'the Dear Lord' throughout, and hopefully that will do most of it. I can't count on an audience who know all the words to I Know Where I'm Going.* I'm still worried that US readers (okay, humour me briefly in the delusion that I will have readers I don't already know personally) see evangelical Protestantism as the model of religion good or bad, and will be bemused or unconvinced by any faith less insistent. But there is nothing I can do about that. For sure I can't write an equivalent to 1700s German states without religion. It would be like writing the European Middle Ages without religion--that gives you the Society for Creative Anachronism.
That was a joke, but never mind.

Clarifying why Myl is paranoid about being indebted. First to another person, because of Midame reminding her how grateful she should be, and how she owed her aunt obedience and affection--which is part of what messes up her relationship with Alard. Then to any creature in the Maerchenwald, because the stories are pretty clear that if you take without asking, or take without paying, the thing you took is going to bring you down. I can't assume that level of folktale knowledge in a reader, so it needs to be reiterated beyond the once or twice.

Laying in the clues of Midame's 'rescue' of the unborn child, via what Myl witnessed and partially remembers, which is also how she learned to hear spells running in water--this will be a tough series to complete without being either too obscure or clunkily obvious. If I can do it, it will wrap things up very tidily.

Establishing that Alard and Myl do not marry for love, and maybe clarifying that no one of their class and time would expect to.
Alard marries her out of guilt, in an attempt to set things right, to close the question of alliance with Lusantia, to get an heir, and to use her supposed gift for unsealing. He doesn't explain any of this to her, so establishing it is going to be more than a little difficult, working from her pov.
Myl marries him in hope of freeing Tyl from enchantment, to restore her family's estate, and because refusing the king is usually a bad idea.
I sure hope nobody reads this looking for a tale of True Love and Soulmates. They do love each other by the end, but--.

Laying in the groundwork for the plot against Alard, the example of the duke of Valdosa in his extravagance and how he finances it, and the resentment of Fadric and others that they can't use his method because Alard forbids it.
Concentrating the exiles subplot on Lusantia, with Valdosa being the impulse for the regicide subplot. It may still be too complicated, but I guess I'll find out.

Building Truda's manipulation of the ladies in waiting, which will be tricky because it happens out of Mylla's sight. I laid some clues in Donvina's outburst, but probably not strongly enough.
I've made it more obvious that Truda is the one who tells Alard about the sweetmeats--did anyone wonder why she was so quick on the spot after Alard told Myl off and went off in a huff? And why Mylla went into labour so soon after Truda's posset? Nobody commented on it, but maybe that means it was perfectly clear.

Simplifying Baldolf's aims. I was still working out what he wanted in the second draft, and by the end of it I knew, but if I'd gone back to trim out the false leads, I would have started rewriting the whole damn thing and it was time to step back.
Resolution: never let anyone see anything earlier than the 3d draft ever again.

Doubtless there's more - oh, the scene where Lina warns of the witchcraft rumours will be revised from a simple meeting in the garden to a full-out fight between two of the ladies-in-waiting, over one encouraging the extravagance mentioned above. I've realised that I will have two 'shower scenes' and a catfight, and an unplanned pregnancy. Exploitation fairy tale!

Anyway, Willow Knot draft 3 sits at 103.6k, and I figure I can go up to 110k while filling holes and polishing. Ideally I'll finish that process before our pre-technological Living History Week at Fort Rodd Hill. That's the end of this month. Excuse me while I gird my loins.

*'I know where I'm going,
I know who's going with me.
I know who I love,
But the Dear knows who I'll marry'

Last day of Nanowrimo, wordcount 30kish

Lowered expectations, your key to success. So, in the last week, I decided that if I hit 30k, I'd be happy. OpenOffice tells me I have 31006 words, and the Nano validation tells me I have 30112 words. Abiword says 30044. I may shoot the file over to work and see what Word thinks it is, but the Nano validation is what counts.
I don't get the cute purple bar that says Winner! but that's okay. I feel justified in wearing my Nanowrimo 2007 t-shirt, because I have 30k words that I didn't have in October. Although I may have to trim out about 10k of a secondary plot that doesn't really go anywhere, at least in that story.




And I have an idea for next year! So apparently I'm going to do this again. An 18th c. epistolary novel, letters between two young women in different 18th c. genres. One to be in a Jane Austen / Fanny Burney sort of social comedy (though, obviously, not anywhere near as skilfully written), the other to be in an Ann Radcliffe / Horace Walpole gothick thriller. So one would be hiding in the shrubbery after being snubbed at an assembly, pouring out her grief onto tear-spotted letter paper, the other dashing off hurried bulletins while holding villainous abductors off with her sharp pen-knife.
Mark asked me why they'd be writing to each other. Because they're cousins. Seems obvious.

For the next while, the only writing I'll be doing is Christmas cards and letters. I hope I can find a printout of the address list I did up a couple of years ago, because it isn't showing up in My Documents.
Tonight I'm off to Bremerton for an SCA event on the Saturday, and hopefully spend some time with my amazing apprentice Eileen.
Sunday I'll be trying to get online for the Drollerie Press chat with Rachael de Vienne. This may be difficult, because I'll be in transit for part of it, and I don't have a laptop with all that cool wifi stuff. Maybe I can borrow Mark's?
Ah, technology.

Twentysixth day of NaNoWriMo, wordcount 27kish

I'm mostly posting so that I can update the tickerfactory counter. Self-indulgent, yes. The wordcount here is the count from a .txt file in OpenOffice. When I transfer the text to the Nano wordcount validator, or, apparently to AbiWord, I lose a substantial number of words by wordcount. The first time it was about 500, but as the text increases, it's up to 800 less, give or take.
Which is kind of disconcerting, even though it's just the count, not actual text gone away.
Anyway, for comparison purposes, here's the counter again.



My cunning plan to write a story that required no research other than checking the Motif Index wasn't all that cunning (big surprise). So far I've had to research Northwest Indian tribes, carny slang and the sharecropping system. All because of my inability to just make things up.
However, I did find a very interesting article on gender bias in the Arne-Thompson Motif Index, which made some telling points. I posted the link on the scribblers thread, and realised that I'd reached some pinnacle of geekery just in saying that.
The article is in JSTOR, if you're the same kind of geek that I am, and it's Folklore Heroines and the Type and Motif Indexes, by Torborg Lundell.
And now I believe I'll go to bed, and read a bit more of The Serpent's Egg, by Caroline Stevermer. And be thankful that the author doesn't feel the need to explain the monarchy system when the prince arrives, nor the physiology of horses whenever someone rides somewhere. (Why yes, I am thinking of the last book I was reading).

going under for the 3d time

Is that a recognisable reference any more? When I was a child it was supposed to be that drowning people went down 3 times, and the 3d time they didn't come up again. Cartoons had swimmers holding up one, two and three fingers as they succumbed, the last being the three fingers alone, slowly going under. I had a vague idea that rescue was only to be attempted on the 3d submersion.
But I ramble.
Done. Wrapped it up at 11:54 with 18,600 words by wordprocessor count, 98 pages in SMF. I'll post my progress wordcount later, after I've had some sleep. And dazed wondering where the story went, I'll post that too. It might be less dazed by then.

Next morning, FutureBarb entry:
Slept in until 6:30, probably because of putting up a new (darker) curtain in the bedroom. Breakfast, feeding of cat, watering of plants. Feet under the laptop by 7:45
break at 9:40 am for more tea - 12335 words
11:52 break for lunch - 13316
3:44 pm break for heated-up Chinese food - 14027
7:35 break for heated-up meat pie, cherry tomatoes from garden - 15120
Mark returns home somewhere in here, but tells me to keep typing and goes to have a shower
9:08 just checking - 16006
Oddly, this was my final wordcount at 11:45 pm last year. Two-and-a-half hours left to beat it!
11:06 just checking - 17668
11:54 call it quits and format to smf - 18570

Story stuff. The MPD aspect went west. Pearl is kinda crazy (think Emily Carr in later years) but not a multiple. She sees ghosts, goes to art school, falls in love/lust and out again, paints a series of ghost portraits that she becomes known for, falls into cranky dementia and does a landscape-with-crow-and-lost-child series as her last show while she's still holding it mostly together.
At story's end she wanders from the home looking for something, which turns out to be the lost girl, and the crow is looking for them both.
Is it good? Dunno. On the mechanical side, sentence construction, spelling etc. I'm usually okay, even when sleepy and stupid. Things happen in the story, and there are recurring themes and motifs, though some fall by the wayside and aren't really resolved. Pearl's first love affair is kind of scanted, but it may be better that way than fully explored and overbalancing the story.
The writing is less visual than in Fold, though Pearl's artist's eye gets some play, and there's some messing about with art jargon and thinking which medium would work better for which bit of scenery. The story is more rooted in the real world - Alberta farmland mostly - which means I did have to go and check a few things, like which art school she could have gone to, and the names of colours of pencil crayons. Which also slowed me down, of course.
I wasn't able to recover the straight-ahead don't-think altered state that I managed last year but this was a different challenge. The benefit this time is that I can probably edit and revise this one, where Fold has felt so all-of-a-piece I haven't really been able to crack it and tweak.

Today: printing it out and getting a statement (probably from Chris) that I wrote it all over the Labour Day weekend. And mailing.
Maybe next year I'll write an 18th c. epistolary novel with lots of abductions and duels and natural children and false confessions.

halfway across the channel

Today I wrote the ending and more of the beginning. The MPD aspect may be dropped--I've discovered that the middle will be Pearl studying art, so she may see the ghosts and render them in paint to lay/release them. To be discovered. But I'm not sure yet what the effect will be of her having lost a portion of her child-self.
Tangent: there's a story by Leon Garfield, where an old miser sells 5? 7? years of his life to a mysterious stranger, only to find that he's sold them from the beginning of his life, not the end, and finds himself haunted by the ghost of his child-self.

The ending is Pearl in a seniors home, mental confusion and my attempt at rendering dementia. So that may be taken as the result of the crow hanging over her and the fragmenting of her self, or not.
I'm having a qualm or two, because this is based on incidents in a real person's real life and there are boundaries. I'm just not sure where they are. I've changed names and details (I've had to invent most details), but is that enough?
Well, it's not going to win or anything. The most I'll do with it is print a few copies on Lulu for myself and friends if I like it when it's done.

Progress:
Up at 5:30, breakfast of egg and cereal. Feed cat, start load of laundry.
Sit down at laptop
8:00 am 6370 words
9:30 am 7125
12:30, break for lunch 8245
2:09 pm 9195
4:08 pm break for early dinner 9790
6:06 pm 10071
9:03 pm break for food 11343 words.
I haven't noted breaks for running in place because I've been fitting those in whenever I heat up tea or coffee in the microwave, so fairly often.
Although I went to the chiropracter on Friday, as part of prep, my shoulders are tight and my back is a bit of a problem. I've taken breaks to stretch, but the more useful thing has been to shove a coldpack between my back and the chairback.

I found my last year's wordcount tracking. It's not by the hour, it's notations of the total each time I had to stop, whether to attend a meeting or recharge a battery. Here's how it runs, for comparison:
late night gate duty has me awake at the 12:01 am opening of the contest. By the time I have to stop and teach a class on resources for performing period plays,
2088 words
at the Haggen's coffeeshop where I can recharge Alicia's laptop,
3075
Sunday morning at the Haggen's
4500
back in camp until I have to break off for a Laurels meeting
5295
after the meeting until the battery runs low
6043
A long stint at the Haggen's, which runs all night, though I do not
9476
Monday morning at the Haggens, a nice long time with no other commitments
11461
Here Alicia copies my file onto a cd and I transfer it back to my own laptop. On the ferry home
12128
home until dinner time
12769
dinner until 11:45 pm, the cutoff being midnight
16006

These are all wordprocessor count, by the way. So I'm not as far ahead as I would have hoped based on staying in one place. On the other hand, I'm working without a net (ie. outline) this time, and that means far more to discover as I go, and less to charge ahead with. A slower business.
I conclude that for speed I need at least a minimal outline. Well, down I go again, and hoping I remember enough of Emily Carr's bio to write 1950s art school convincingly. But I will sleep soon. I only got in about 600 words in the late slot last night. Not really worth the loss of sleep, when I do better by getting up early.

a bobbing head breaks the sullen surface

3-Day Novel contest is on. At present I am still coherent, and shouldn't really be wasting my 'quiet aware' state posting, but I have my duty towards my fanbase, you know (cough, choke) regardless of the weight of sacrifice I must endure.
I got up at 5:30 am, my usual time, watered the plants and had breakfast: boiled egg, shredded wheat and a bowl of blackberries. Made tea, sat down and started typing.
9:40 am, break to make coffee: 1,011 words
1:10 pm, break to stretch, run in place and fetch snacks: 2,260 words
3:11 pm, break to run in place, think about dinner: 3,212 words
5:09 pm, break to bike to bank, order Chinese food: 4,216
8:40 pm, break to run in place, feed cat: 5,083 words.

My target, which I don't expect to hit, but which gives me something to aim at, is 8-10k a day. My priority is having a complete story, regardless of length. I'm planning the same strategy I used last year, a story with a set beginning and end, the middle to be filled like an accordion, stretching as time and energy permit, pleats flattening into ripples.
As far as story goes, I'm 3 chapters in (chapters being a fairly arbitrary division) and little Pearl has wandered from her home into the prairie. Her parents search and fear. An avatar of slow and lonely death (a crow, as it happens) hangs over her, and a semblance or segment of Pearl flees into the night. The carrion-crow follows, leaving the real Pearl curled sleeping on the ground, where she is found the next morning by German Shepherd Dale.
Dale is based on a real police dog Dale, so I might be changing his name tomorrow.
I'm playing here with the psychic investigation / paranormal theory that ghosts are split away during extreme stress, and will be mixing that up with MPD (yeah, the same idea I'm playing with in Climbing Boys, but a different treatment).

Now I must sink again and see if I can gear up into my 1k/hr speed, my peak last year. 16k total shouldn't be that hard to beat, when I don't have any meetings to attend, ferries to catch or classes to teach!

The relentless spotlight of public scrutiny

Here I am still recovering from 3 days drive back from Pennsylvania (left Pittsburgh 6pmish Aug 12, arrived Victoria 7pmish Aug 15) and what does life demand of me? Being photographed in medieval costume gazing adoringly into my husband's eyes and hoicking up my skirts to show off my shoes and pattens (not simultaneously - it could be a timeline, though).
Mark was interviewed for (in theory) the Business section of the Victoria Times-Colonist, as a small businessman with the more-photogenic-than-staring-into-a-monitor angle of being inspired by medieval art and doing Living History. Which in itself is a fine thing and I approve and support. I just wish it hadn't been scheduled so soon after our return. Consider that Chris had been occupying alone for 3 weeks, followed by our return and the explosion of unpacking over every available horizontal surface. Start with the untidiness of the packing process, left unreconciled, and the remnants of making desperately-needed-linen-clothing, also unfinished, which formed the base level, and well, the kerosene and a match solution had some appeal.
Anyway, Mark and I brought the ground floor at least into a semi-presentable state, with several items getting upstairs and out of sight, though not quite into the attic yet.

The photographer arrived first, and took several photos of Mark's buckles and brooches and knives, some being held and some on the table. Most of the time he took two photos in rapid succession, flash-Flash, reminding me of that handgun-training thing of always shooting twice, to make sure. After a bit of that, we went out to the backyard, where he took several shots that Mark referred to later as 'romance novel covers', with me leaning on him or him leaning down so as to be able to look into my eyes. (He did suggest that I stand on a box, but there didn't seem to be time for me to go and find one.) It differed from the typical romance cover in that neither of us had difficulty keeping the shoulders or chest covered, and flowing locks were not available (mine were under the wimple, and his aren't flowing). We were also directed to look at each other, and some substantial number of romance covers have the lovers staring off in the same direction, as if at some threat or hope of escape.
I tried to pose once as the adoring and vinelike wife from that Gothic German sculpture (if I can find a photo I'll post it) twined about her husband with a rather frightening smile on her face, like a Greek comedy mask, but received no encouragement.
The photographer departed to cover an Incubus concert, protected by his military-strength earplugs, which allow him to not hear the music at all. The reporter came inside, wrote lots of shorthand notes and communicated enthusiasm about this being a more interesting assignment than most. Which is probably true, Victoria not being a hotbed of excitement usually (though allegedly a hotbed of satanism, according to Michelle Remembers).

And after that I was exhausted, and went to bed. It was pretty much as tiring as getting the retinal scan, even though the bright lights were mostly directed at other places than my eyes.
Good thing I'm not likely to be interviewed much, if it's that wearing when I'm not even the subject.

Writing-related: I've become annoyingly paranoid about wordcount. I've got to stop checking wordcount while in process, because it makes me hesitant to spend any words on the latter part of the story, like, say, the climax. Oh no, I think, I'm just under 4k! I'd better scamp the denouement, or else I can't submit to Clarkesworld!
Given that what everyone seems to like about Willow Knot is the kinda-lush (I call it 'drenched') sensory detail, if I keep hesitating to include description and tactile stuff in the last 3d of the book (court and city) because I'm afraid of bumping the wordcount higher, I'm seriously working against myself.
I need to stop looking at the wordcount. It is for me what Amazon numbers are for those who've actually completed books and have them on the market.
Is there another way to measure progress and assure myself that I've actually done something?