Taking stock

Not sure where this year went, but gone it has. I can report progress on a few of the resolutions I made at the start of the year - less coffee consumed, various parts of the house decorated, making inroads into the current OU course with two cheering TMA results under my belt, even spent less time faffing around online. Not so much progress re exercise and reading more fiction, so no prizes for guessing what this year's resolutions will be...

The slugs have left the building

I never used to appreciate coming downstairs in the morning to a slug-trail-free carpet. I do now. Heck, yes.
Two more landmarks this week - we have finished wallpapering the study. It is now a pleasing patchwork of old magnolia-painted paper and new not yet magnolia-painted paper. But I didn't have to repaper round the window reveal. This is, in my opinion, a very good thing indeed. And it looks a whole lot better than the mish mash of 270 year old limewashed plaster and modern repairs. Just the rest of the house to go now.
I've also perpetrated another 50,000 words of execrable fiction in the name of NaNoWriMo, which means I'm edging closer to completing the million words of dross required as part of my writerly apprenticeship. And it's been hard work dredging up so much rubbish this year. I made a silly mistake in starting out trying to base it on my post-apocalyptic idea for the End of Course Assessment (ECA in OU-speak) and discovered it's doomed...

Not quite November

No prizes for guessing what I'll be doing next month. Not entirely sure what I've been doing this month, it seems to have passed in a blur of school runs and study. The first assignment's been handed in for my current OU course, and I've managed to work ahead to clear a bit of brain space for NaNoWriMo. All I need now is an idea. I've also been tiling the kitchen: having sworn to finish it before November that leaves, well, today. So I shouldn't really be hanging around in the virtual world right now.
Oh, nearly forgot the slug update: two more caught crossing the salt wastes in the corner of the dining room about a week ago. Ongoing eery silence...

October already?

Wow, time flies...
DIY tip for the month - drilling a hole in your central heating pipe is an excellent cure for boredom. That was, of course, the latest episode in the saga of the study flooring, which had expanded so much it was crimping the pipe and making the radiator leak. The ensuing application of the drill to the offending floorboard was by and large counter productive.
Looking on the bright side, while the plumber was here he pointed out the noisy new boiler wasn't meant to be that noisy, so it's had a new fuel pump fitted. Now it's so quiet you can hear the cat snore.
No 1 daughter is settling in at uni, my new OU course started this weekend and great progress has been made in decorating the house. And one of the preceding statements is untrue.
We've been waging a war of attrition against the slugs which seem to spend most nights trailing around the conservatory and dining room. On average we've been catching one or two a week. Then a couple of nights ago - when it was really, really rainy - four of them launched themselves at the salt barricade across the point where they emerge from beneath the skirting board. I think the plan must have been a sort of team Slug Walter Raleigh effort. Or they may just have been really hungry after being cooped up behind the skirting for a fortnight. Either way, they didn't make it.
I'm just worried now how many grieving sluggy relatives are behind the skirting boards, pumping iron and making ready for the next mission...

There it is again

Finished, in italics. I suppose there are worse hangups to have.

Summer's over

10/10 for writerly observation. Finished that damned short story last night and have entered it in the BSFA short story competition, where I have little doubt it will sink without trace. But, hey, I finished it...

And now I have finished it I realise the main problem was the choice of central character: it simply wasn't plausible to have her on the spot for the later developments I had planned. Which means:

• it's shorter than intended but finished before the deadline, and
  
• in spite of calls for more optimistic SF - if I rediscover the blog where I read about that I'll stick the link here, but don't bank on it - it has a wallow-in-misery downbeat ending. Unless, of course, you're rooting for the alien.

And - rather better news - my short story Creeping Justice has been published in Issue #2 of Concept Sci-fi!

Doomed

Oh well...
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Suppose in the meantime I'd better get on with that archaeology essay due on Friday. Then I can get back to the short story that's been refusing to toe the production line all month.

Vertigo

No, not the Hitchcock thriller, but the head-spinning, room-reeling, can't-walk-along-the-landing-without-bumping-into-the-walls, disruptive kind. It's been a useless week. There was some good news: it wasn't so bad I couldn't get dressed and downstairs before motion sickness kicked in; the in-laws rallied round so daughter could get to her driving theory test on Tuesday*; and spending two days prostrate on the couch meant I could watch the entire first series of Life on Mars.** Great music, shame about the avocado wallpaper.***
So not a big week for progress, instead of decorating the living room I've been shuffling around the house like an old crone. But the floor looks bogging smart.

* she failed again, but only by two points this time
** surreal experience, lying on the couch watching Gene Hunt et al getting boozed up while the room oscillated about me
*** and we were so pleased with our new avocado bathroom suite in 1973...

Guess what redux

They're done, gone, left the building!
Then the electrician turned up and fitted the cloakroom* light, moved the switch in the office and finished up almost all the odds and ends he needed to do. That elusive finishing line has inched a fraction closer. Then there's the small matter of redecorating most of the house. We've launched the campaign in the living room, fitting the oak flooring ourselves** - leaving the recommended 15mm expansion gap round the edges, unlike the joiners - we ran out of glue and weekend at the same time, otherwise my sore neck, back and fingers would feel even worse than they do today.
On the studying front, I've failed to do any advance work so far on the Level 3 Classical Greek course starting next year and am having one of those phases where I think completing my degree at the end of the year after next is too far distant.
Writing-wise, the short SF story I've been working on seems determined to become a turkey, so I'll shelve it for a few days.

* Yeah, we normally call it the downstairs loo, too...
** For those of you concerned about the fate of the faded swirly blue carpet, it is destined to become weed control mulch around the new trees we hope to plant this autumn.

Guess what...

The joiners are due back tomorrow. One of them arrived last week to finish off the remaining odds and ends and to fix the bowing study floor. Unfortunately he rounded off the morning by sawing through his thumb, which had an adverse impact on productivity, as you can imagine.
The builders have replaced the patio door with two new windows, repointed the front of the house and have GONE. Finished (that word again). Really. I kid you not. I'm grappling with the radical concept that soon all the work on the house might be complete (ringing the changes here). If the joiners actually manage to do their bit by the end of this week (keeping expectations suitably low key here) that just leaves the electrician to work his magic with a couple of light fittings and switches and electric to the barns outside. Then I can carry on decorating.
We almost have a fully functional house with lights, sockets and bookshelves where they're needed, warm water inside where it's meant to be and rainwater outside where it's meant to be. All right, the holes in the yard aren't concreted and we haven't sown the new lawns yet, but this has to be progress of some kind. We'll have been here two years in October.

Spooky

My last three blog posts contain the word 'finished', two of them italicised. Is this significant, I wonder?

Yay! It's a bank holiday!

I've spent the past three days crawling up and down the new stairs with sandpaper, woodstain and Danish oil. My knees ache, my back hurts and my wrists are sore.
31 spindles, 2 more newels and the landing handrails to go, then I'll be finished. One way or the other.

Sawdust

The latest swarm of joiners has left the building. This is a good thing. They'll be back in the first week of June to fit five new doors and then, horror of horrors, they may have finished. This is a mind-boggling prospect: dare I think in terms of resurrecting the daily writing habit?
I'd better not be too hasty, the other joiner's due tomorrow to finish off the handrail on the new staircase and when he does I have the hall, stairs, landing, bathroom and study to decorate. And when the builders have finished plastering round the new windows there's a living room to decorate too...

Oops

Should have updated this a few days ago. 'Finished' Scriptfrenzy with 112 pages. I'll leave it to fester for a while and see if I can wring a credible ending out of it one day.
In the meantime I have one or two post-rewire decorating jobs to do - two rooms down, the rest of the house to go. I may be some time.

Progress

Going into Scriptfrenzy Day 15 with 84 pages under my belt and about to enter what might turn out to be a plot cul de sac. But since I don't have a map I won't really know until I reach the other end.
And the joiners are still here, along with assorted hammer drills, mitre saws and, of course, sawdust...

This month's obsession

I've taken up the Scriptfrenzy challenge, to write 100 script pages during April. Scriptwriting forms part of the OU course I'll be starting in September and since I've never tried it before it seemed a good idea to familiarise myself with the formatting and so forth.
The target's to produce 3 and a bit pages a day. I'm going into Day 8 with 43 pages under my belt so far. This leads me to anticipate one or two problems with pacing in the later stages. Unless the world's ready for a four-hour screenplay.
Still, it's good to get the daily writing habit back on track. Something had to take the place of my coffee habit...

Gobsmacked

OMG. The joiner has brought his own vacuum cleaner.

Been writing

I've been writing. Finished a new short story for an impossibly ambitious target. Life is good. :-)

My current course

Has been dropped. Long live the next course (starting September).
Probably the best outcome, since a plague of joiners is about to descend on the house. Hopefully when they leave we'll have a new kitchen, staircase and study floor. If I don't have to clean up any sawdust I'll be ecstatic.
In the meantime here's a seasonal picture (the Easter Bunny).

It can't be March already...

Lots of stuff's happened since my last posting, I'm sure, but I'm struggling to recall exactly what. In the aftermath of the man-flu I managed to finish my first assignment for the OU course on time. I even carried on studying the next section while I waited for it to be returned, telling myself if it was a rubbish mark I'd quit the course, since I'm less than enthralled with linguistics. It turned out to be a so-so mark so I threw myself at the course material with renewed vigour. And fell asleep. Three days in a row. The kids had recycled another virus from school. It was round about this point my resolution to write something every day faltered. Or, more accurately, keeled over and refused to take another step.*
Then, when I could once more contemplate the course book without sliding into a doze, the OU announced that, as a result of government funding cuts, one of the courses I'd planned to do later would be ending next year, instead of 2014. Which meant I would have to overlap it with the Creative Writing course due to start this autumn. I've come up with various creative solutions to get round this problem, two of which involve dropping my current course. So, while I wait for the powers that be to pronounce on my future I might just make a start on the decorating.
Oh, yeah, I also gave up coffee. 8-o

* Doing OK on the others so far

Man-flu

After managing to sidestep every virus that's felled the rest of the family this winter my luck ran out. So much for getting ahead of my study schedule. I've been suffering womanfully for the past two days and whilst it's nice to share, I've had enough. You can have it back, guys, any time you want.
This means I've spent a lot of time doing, for want of a better term, online research. I was fascinated to read one of the nominated stories for a forthcoming award, which appears to have been written as a tribute to the late Catherine Cookson, a sort of Tilly Trotter in the 25th Century.
Damn, I can write cutesy with an edge; why didn't I think of that?

Oh well

I had this daft idea I might have redecorated round the fireplace formerly known as a gatestoop by now, but I was wrong. So here it is, still getting used to its sudden change in circumstances.

I've just started a new OU course - The Art of English - which is my first at Level 3, so the study is likely to stay this way until I've got to grips with all the new jargon. I'm making no rash predictions as to when that might be, since I'm still wading through the first chapter, midway through my very own Groundhog Day number 3.

Of rejection, gatestoops and fireplaces

I just got my first real rejection ever! From a publisher, that is. I feel inordinately pleased because he spared the time to explain why the piece wasn't suitable, which is greatly appreciated. Kudos to that editor!

I ought to be working on another story while that warm inner glow lasts, but the builders are still thundering about the house, rearranging a couple of doorways upstairs and finishing off the new fireplace in the study. I'm also inordinately pleased with the fire surround, which this time last Thursday was still a gatestoop (the one on the left, to be precise). Combined with a bit of carved stone found behind the damaged stone lintel it makes a far better fireplace than the seventies concoction we've just removed. I'm looking forward to moving back into the study before the start of my next OU course, but in the meantime it's all a bit distracting.