![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Monday, October 1st
Oct. 1st, 2012 01:25 pmThe Daily Report
So, I've landed in Maryland and spent a day resting and rebounding from travel. Things are going well here on the personal front, but I'll save that so I have something to write for the personal blog.
On a professional level, things are looking good for the next several weeks. We now have a desktop computer set up in the spare room that I use as an office while I'm here, so I won't be restricted to my little netbook and lapdesk when I don't want to be. There isn't a chair or really room for one, but the mouse and keyboard that were handed down with this unit are wireless and so anybody who's ever seen me in my natural writing position can imagine how little this troubles me.
So, I think this is going to be a pretty good trip as far as productivity goes... the future looks bright. The present is a little bit more muddied. I've only been a thirtysomething for a bit over a year or two (depending on if the big three-oh counts as "thirtysomething"... my instinct is that it should, although technically I must cede that it is a thirtynothing) and I still have this bad habit of planning like I'm in my early to mid twenties, thinking I can pull hours out of the aether, burn the midnight oil in the week before a trip and then also be raring to go and able to pound out words during my layovers.
Such is not the case. When I tweeted Saturday morning that the chapter would be delayed a couple of days, I was still thinking I could thresh out the body of it while in transit but it was all I could do to be marginally ready for my trip and then get myself from from gate to gate in the airports.
As for the other thing I thought I'd have done by today: I seem to be having a little difficulty resolving Zeno's paradox. In one week I completed the author's commentary on half the chapters in book one, so I thought I could do the same in another week.
And I did.
I finished half the chapters that are remaining.
So I'm learning a lot about how to do this for future books. I think for book 2 onward, on I'm going to transcribe a chapter and write the commentary for it every day... because I quite enjoy doing the commentary, this will actually help me quite a bit. Because I don't like the job of compiling the book, and I don't even like re-reading some of the older chapters for the sake of re-reading them or to look for errors. But doing so as part of the commentary? It's a lot easier.
Anyway, I've got five chapters left to commentate upon and five days in the work-week, so I think I'm just going to follow the course nature suggests here. I'm going to give myself a block of time each day to commentarize one chapter and also to look over the whole and see where I can improve anything (in the commentary, I mean) or round up stray typos in the manuscript, and then at last put this thing to bed over the weekend. The fact that I have this desktop to work upon will make things quite a bit easier for me all around... I knew it was going to be here but I didn't realize it was going to be net-capable without any work on my part.
The State of the Me
Good. Quite good. It's some degrees cooler here than it was in Nebraska when I left, and being on a groundish floor apartment rather than the attic under a black roof makes for a markedly cooler environment, and you all know what that does for my sleep.
Dreams From Last Night
Something about a ragdoll rabbit thing and a fairyland with all the traditional pitfalls therein. Don't really remember in any more detail at this point.
Plans For Today
Okay, so I kind of danced around this up-post of here, but I have literally nothing written for the next chapter of Tales of MU. And I don't have it in me to sprint and write it in a day as I sometimes do. This is not going to be a hard chapter but it's not an easy one, either.
Since I've missed the window to get it done on time, I'm going to aim for doing it properly and start the development cycle today. I am going to be making a small change to my development/writing process that occurred to me while I was not-quite-dozing in flight on Saturday... more on that if it works.
It is the first of October, and I always feel good about starting things at the beginning of a month, so there's that.
So, I've landed in Maryland and spent a day resting and rebounding from travel. Things are going well here on the personal front, but I'll save that so I have something to write for the personal blog.
On a professional level, things are looking good for the next several weeks. We now have a desktop computer set up in the spare room that I use as an office while I'm here, so I won't be restricted to my little netbook and lapdesk when I don't want to be. There isn't a chair or really room for one, but the mouse and keyboard that were handed down with this unit are wireless and so anybody who's ever seen me in my natural writing position can imagine how little this troubles me.
So, I think this is going to be a pretty good trip as far as productivity goes... the future looks bright. The present is a little bit more muddied. I've only been a thirtysomething for a bit over a year or two (depending on if the big three-oh counts as "thirtysomething"... my instinct is that it should, although technically I must cede that it is a thirtynothing) and I still have this bad habit of planning like I'm in my early to mid twenties, thinking I can pull hours out of the aether, burn the midnight oil in the week before a trip and then also be raring to go and able to pound out words during my layovers.
Such is not the case. When I tweeted Saturday morning that the chapter would be delayed a couple of days, I was still thinking I could thresh out the body of it while in transit but it was all I could do to be marginally ready for my trip and then get myself from from gate to gate in the airports.
As for the other thing I thought I'd have done by today: I seem to be having a little difficulty resolving Zeno's paradox. In one week I completed the author's commentary on half the chapters in book one, so I thought I could do the same in another week.
And I did.
I finished half the chapters that are remaining.
So I'm learning a lot about how to do this for future books. I think for book 2 onward, on I'm going to transcribe a chapter and write the commentary for it every day... because I quite enjoy doing the commentary, this will actually help me quite a bit. Because I don't like the job of compiling the book, and I don't even like re-reading some of the older chapters for the sake of re-reading them or to look for errors. But doing so as part of the commentary? It's a lot easier.
Anyway, I've got five chapters left to commentate upon and five days in the work-week, so I think I'm just going to follow the course nature suggests here. I'm going to give myself a block of time each day to commentarize one chapter and also to look over the whole and see where I can improve anything (in the commentary, I mean) or round up stray typos in the manuscript, and then at last put this thing to bed over the weekend. The fact that I have this desktop to work upon will make things quite a bit easier for me all around... I knew it was going to be here but I didn't realize it was going to be net-capable without any work on my part.
The State of the Me
Good. Quite good. It's some degrees cooler here than it was in Nebraska when I left, and being on a groundish floor apartment rather than the attic under a black roof makes for a markedly cooler environment, and you all know what that does for my sleep.
Dreams From Last Night
Something about a ragdoll rabbit thing and a fairyland with all the traditional pitfalls therein. Don't really remember in any more detail at this point.
Plans For Today
Okay, so I kind of danced around this up-post of here, but I have literally nothing written for the next chapter of Tales of MU. And I don't have it in me to sprint and write it in a day as I sometimes do. This is not going to be a hard chapter but it's not an easy one, either.
Since I've missed the window to get it done on time, I'm going to aim for doing it properly and start the development cycle today. I am going to be making a small change to my development/writing process that occurred to me while I was not-quite-dozing in flight on Saturday... more on that if it works.
It is the first of October, and I always feel good about starting things at the beginning of a month, so there's that.