Tuesday, February 21st

THE DAILY REPORT

I don't usually do this before going to sleep, but I've been informed that there's going to be some serious yard-and-tree work going on here tomorrow and that it's going to be necessary for the power to be off for an unknown number of hours tomorrow during the day, as they're clearing trees that are dangerously overhanging power lines. Inconvenient, but necessary. Unfortunately I don't have an estimate for how long the power will be off or even a window for when it might start. It's possible that part might be done bright and early and things will be back to normal right around the time I normally start to seriously hit my groove.

But of course I can't count on that, so I've downloaded my work-in-progress files off Google Docs so I can work on them offline. I have not had a chance to test my new laptop's battery life with the wireless turned off, but so far its usage estimates have seemed pretty spot-on so at the very least I shouldn't lose power suddenly. It gives me about four or five hours with internet usage, so I'm hoping I can squeeze as many as six hours out of it through power-saving measures.

There's room for serious misadventure to derail my day, but I'm more sanguine about all of this than I would have been a few months ago. I have a really good start on the chapter I want to post tomorrow, and I'm a lot better at keeping calm and keeping focused.

I'll be able to tweet from my phone if anything changes, but for now the plan is still to put up a chapter today. I had thought that I could wrap that up and also put out the second newsletter, but given the battery constraints I think it's best to focus on one thing. Chapter Tuesday, newsletter Thursday.

Tuesday, Continued.

Okay, I'm awake before the power outage. Wasn't sure that was going to happen, the way my sleep schedule had gone the past few days.

I've been thinking about my schedule in early March, when I'm going to visit my family, and specifically I'm thinking about actually declaring a week's vacation. That's not something I often do... I mean, I usually try to keep my schedule up and then just miss dates.

I've been thinking that I can get a head of the game by a couple of chapters and then I'd be able to keep things up while I'm away, but I'm actually going to be gone for a span covering three Tales of MU chapters and two Other Tales. A couple of chapters of padding isn't going to cut it.

On the other hand, though, a bit of padding and an hour or two of timed writing every day with my schedule cleared for the first week of the trip would let me stay on top of things. If I end up being unusually productive in limited time or grabbing more time to write than I'm counting on, I'll come out of it ahead.

So, yeah, that's probably what I'll do. To be specific, March 2nd through the 8th... so the day I leave until a week later. I won't be back yet, but that just leaves me the chapter on the 12th to take care of, and gives me plenty of time to get it done.

STATE OF THE ME

Sevenish hours of sleep last night. If nothing else good comes of this debacle, it's that I'm awake in the morning again.

DREAMS FROM LAST NIGHT

Terraria as an MMO, with guilds arranged around military lines. I was an engineer helping to overhaul a base's traps and wiring mechanisms before an inspection.

PLANS FOR TODAY

Got a Tales of MU chapter to finish, and am otherwise going to get as much done with the day as I can.

Lights are back on!

It's been quite a day for my nerves. I'd been coping with the loud noises pretty well, but the power coming back on gave me a bit of a start. Still, I've got some decent writing done already and it should be relatively clear sailing from here on out.

Well, that was a day.

I got right around 4,200 words today. I'm pretty proud of that under the circumstances, which included numerous sounds and interruptions. ~2000 words of Tales of MU, some of which will go on next chapter after I realized I had a perfect ending point for this one and I wrote past it, and ~2,200 of the story I started yesterday. I'm kind of edging towards "nervous wreck" territory, honestly, which helped me firm up my decision about scheduling a hiatus in March... though the fact that I still kicked out the words the way I did almost swayed me in the other direction. In the end I decided to split the difference and took the two regular MU updates in the middle of my trip off the schedule.

I'm not planning on taking anything like a whole week off of writing, but the time I'll have for it will be less predictable. Hence taking the biggest obligations off the schedule. It might be that everything just goes perfectly and the muse is there and I kick the chapters off anyway, in which case I'll just be coming back ahead. I just don't want to count on it happening and commit to them and then either wreck my vacation trying to meet that, or end up failing and having disappointed readers checking the site every few days (or hours) and getting frustrated.