Thursday, December 05, 2002
Apparently this morning's headache was mostly a severe case of dehydration, which I treated with a half-gallon of iced tea. By late morning, I felt much better.
And the office was made functional. Which is not to say unpacked. It's still far from unpacked. But it is functional. I was actually able to get some work done today. Real writing work, not packing and unpacking work. I burned a CD for Derek with my contributions for the Our thoughts make spirals in their world disc and finally sent it off to the post office. I did some stuff I had to do for the disc's insert. I e-mailed Bill Schafer a line drawing of Dicranurus monstrosus for Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold. But, most importantly, I began notes for Murder of Angels. It seemed appropriate, that I should begin work on the new novel on the first full day in the new apartment. I did a fair amount of notes last November, gearing up to write Low Red Moon, and the exercise proved quite useful. As I've often said, I steer away from conventional outlines, which I a) find confining and b) never follow anyway, but I am discovering that a dozen or so pages of notes prior to the commencement of the actual writing isn't such a bad idea. I just have to not allow them to become restrictive. I have to remind myself, "You can ignore all this later on if you want to do so." The first hurdle that I'm having to overcome is exactly how I'll go about writing what will be, essentially, a sequel to Silk set ten years after the events of that novel. I can see that it will be more of a true fantasy than any novel I've written to date. I think I'll like that part; I'm not sure how other people will feel. More on that later.
And speaking of San Francisco, this evening I finalized my plans for attending SpookyCon in January. I'll be staying on three days afterwards, thanks to the hospitality of Darren McKeeman (Gothic.Net guru and SpookyCon organizer) and his wife Eliza, to do research for Murder of Angels. I've not been to San Francisco since May 1997, so I'm beginning to look forward to the trip.
So far, I've found only one casualty of the move, but it's a significant casualty. My old Apple, Pandora, the Mac Colour Classic, apparently got bumped about at some point and some bit or another that controls the monitor was jostled out-of-whack (technically speaking). So, she'll have to go to see a Mac doctor, just as soon as things calm down a little. It will only be the second time in the nine and a half years that I've owned her that she's needed a repair; the first was only a broken on/off switch. In computer years, I suppose she's a fossil, but I'm fond of the old gray thing.
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