Surreal Tuesday

Huh. None of my replies to comments on LJ are showing up. I’m afraid to re-post them ’cause I fully expect them to duplicate like bunnies. Damn LJ. There’s still kinks in the system! Pfft.

Had a slew of really vivid dreams last night, or rather early this morning. They were all disturbing, of the variety that’re so real you’re not sure when you wake up if you’re still dreaming. And they were exhausting to have. When my alarm went off, I could barely drag myself out of bed. Stumbled through my morning wake-up and then staggered out to the bedroom in the dark to feel a soft nose nudge my ankle. This totally jolted me as we always lock Hobkin away in his area when we’re both asleep, so for a half a second I thought some wild animal had gotten into our house. Of course, I realized a moment later it had to be Hobkin. Turned on the light to see the little fuzzwit blinking up at me. “Hi, Mom. Where’s my breakfast?”

Matthew, sleepy and bleary, insisted he locked him away. I checked. The door to Hobkin’s area was wide open, of course. After a quick perusal of the house, it would appear that Hobkin, unsupervised, had not gotten into any mischief. Amazing. He was totally laid back at what the big deal was as I checked to make sure no cabinet doors had been opened or closets ransacked. Nope. Looks like the little fuzzhead behaved himself. He hadn’t even unfurled the toilet paper in the guest bathroom which was dangling, oh so seductively, within skunk-reach, or ravaged the tights I had laying around the bedroom floor (I’m a slob, so sue me). I suspect he must have napped until my alarm went off, actually.

So, bemused, I fed him breakfast, and finished getting ready. Weird beginning for the day. Had a lot of coffee to make up for it.

Writing stats:

1500 words on the SF piece. And in a wild fit of inspiration, I outlined it, so I know where I’m going with it. And, when I needed a break from that, 500 words on the new fairy tale, and it’s done. Zero draft complete.

Progress, yay! I’m still annoyed that I didn’t finish that magic realism piece, and that the novel has again ground to a halt, but I think if I dwell too much on unfinished works, I’ll be unable to get any word count going.

Did a preliminary words-written-in-2003 count as it’s creeping towards November and I needed something to aid my procrastination efforts. Roughly 66K, not counting unfinished efforts. Not too shabby. A little more than I’d written at about this time last year, so I’m still increasing my output, but I very much doubt I’m making 100K this year. Not unless my muse enters into a profound state of overdrive and lets me crank out the rest of that novel. And my goal of 1000K per day, not even counting weekends, is totally kyboshed. Oh well, just gotta keep on plugging away. The year’s not over yet.

On the financial side of things, this doesn’t look like a good writing-year paywise. I got several small checks, but nothing big (yet). I should have a couple nicely plump payments come in next year, but that won’t help this year’s taxes. I expect another couple smallish checks and maybe a royalty check or two, but between postage fees, office supplies, SFWA dues, and other misc. expenses, my black line/red line has an overlapping quality about it. I think I’d end up in the red this year except for the Pixeltown books I sold at Dragon*Con. Those should push me into the “paying taxes” area again, I think (sheesh, it seems so wrong to be in a position to want to pay taxes).

Or then again, maybe I’ll get lucky and get an end-of-year windfall like I did from Phobos last year. Hey, it could happen.

And tonight, I get to torture Hobkin. He needs his nails trimmed now so he has a few days before the show to wear down the sharp edge that always happens when I cut his claws. He hates having his nails cut, and there is no way this side of hell that he’ll let me emory board the points down. And I also want to rub some lotion into his pads. It’s good for his little paws, but he hates that too. Typically what happens is I put some lotion on one foot and he struggles away before I can get it rubbed in, and he leaves greasy pawprint smears on the carpet and kitchen floor. Then I catch him and repeat the process three more times. Sigh.

He also gets a bath, but we’ll probably wait until Thursday to do that. I hope the show doesn’t freak him out.