Monday, May 12th, 2003 - Crickets I felt kinda gulity about not updating for nearly a week and then teasing you with a silly online test, so I'm writing a more entry-like entry. Whee! Ahem. Well, the thing I can hardly stop talking about around here is our new car! I pounced on a great deal on a 1994 Saturn SC2 -- the driver's side door is bashed in, which meant it was going for waaay below blue book. It's a very nice car -- in fact, Tim keeps commenting that the car feels far too nice for us when he drives it. But! both of us hate driving much less than we used to, now that we're driving the Saturn. It's very snazzy, perfect interior and the parts that aren't smashed are nice on the outside, too. So what if we have a spiderweb covered gash on one door? I love the car. It handles wonderfully (the woman we bought it from wryly commented that it had saved her life more than once) and it's actually fun to drive. Tim put up a picture of it here (1/3 the way down the page). There are pictures of the house (and me, just after gardening) on that page as well. I suspect that sentences aren't flowing very well just now. Oh well. So, on Sunday I took the new Saturn out for errands. Pretty much all the chores that I've been putting off for months (or years in one case) that invovled driving I got done on Sunday. I bought plants (been meaning to garden since Feb.), I took back over a year's worth of plastic bags to be recycled, I -- well, the other things were more recent chores, but the point is that I did them right away rather than put them off -- because it was fun to drive! Oh, and I noticed that having an ugly gash in your driver's side door? It makes people give you the respect. I could see it in people's eyes -- they think about cutting me off, note the gash, decide to play it safe! Hee! I'm a very good driver but it's even easier when people are giving you a wide berth! It makes me giggle. Ahem, yes, so, set in the tomato plants, which first meant dig-dig-digging until my shoulders ached. I had to dig a new plot, since the old spot for tomatoes seems to have acquired verticulum wilt (which stays in the soil). I'm even going to buy new cages for these plants, just to avoid spreading the disease, it's that annoying. I love garden-fresh tomatoes, and I hate it when I lose a fancy plant to the wilt! Grr. Know those entires where at the beginning I claim that it's going to be random, but then I talk about only one thing? Yeah, this ain't one of those kinda entries. I'm slowly experiencing the wisdom Tim has tried to pass on before: it's almost easier to be diligent about writing a novel because when you sit down to write, you have something to work on -- characters, setting, plot, even symbolism is all laid out by you ahead of time, or it becomes more and more established, and you can just sit down and go. Or push, as has been the case for me lately -- I've been doing the write, check word count, keep writing, check again thing. It's hard, but I get some words down. It's so much harder to do that when you have to come up with all that stuff first! Of course, I'm not at all certain what I'm writing is not total crap, but at least I'm getting it down. I have such a long incubation period after a story, I worry about how long I'll need to let a novel sit, but I'm looking forward to finishing a draft and finding out. Hey, it's a first novel -- after this it'll be cake, right? Right? (cue crickets) Am v. whimsical tonight, is true. Man, don't ever call yourself something like whimsical in a journal entry. It's guaranteed to make you stop and stare at your screen in self-doubt for minutes and minutes.

Exercise Log: I've been coming up with very creative excuses why I shouldn't go to the gym. On Sunday, I dug up the garden and set in tomato seedlings. It counts. Writing log: Banging away at the YA Novel Current Publications: "Famishing" in Strange Horizons. My first pro sale! "Wetting the Bed" and a collab with Tim Pratt, "A Serious Case of Fairies" in Floodwater "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind Currently Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon Donate money to my teeth, my grad school application fees, our writerly projects (Floodwater and Flytrap!). Every little bit helps!

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