A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Hello there! I’m Tess, and you’re about to read an experiment of mine. The experiment is to see how long I can keep a decent log of my writing life, and to see whether that log has any entertainment value. It’s sort of like a captain’s log, but almost definitely less exciting. Hope you enjoy!
9/7/2019
900
Weekly total: 4081
Fun fact time. In the Choronzon Chronicles, Jude Li has a stuffed animal named Mortimor the Moose. He’s based on an actual stuffed animal from when I was a kid--my favorite, in fact. Unfortunately, the real Mortimor the Moose was prone to going missing. I wasn’t great at keeping track of my stuff, and he was pretty small. Anyway, I haven’t seen him in over a decade, and I honestly don’t know if he just went missing one last time, or if maybe one of my parents told me he did so they could hide him away somewhere, so I’d have him when I got older. Seriously, I don’t know. And it’s late, and 2 hours later in St. Louis, so it’s too late to ask.
He came up in a passage I wrote tonight, so I sent off a parental query and tried to see if I could find him anywhere on the internet. And holy smoked shit, y’all, I found him.
It was a difficult but strangely lucky journey. I basically had to search variations on the concept of “stuffed moose” in image search to see if I could yield anything close to right. You see, Mortimor had a very particular look to him, and I remember it well.
And it turns out...he was never actually a moose. His original name was Rodney the Reindeer. Which is why searching for various kinds of moose proved a difficult path. Then again, it did work eventually, and I never once searched for ‘reindeer’ instead. Is this a common mistake?
I think I’ll just do my best to forget this again, and then in 20 years have a fun day re-remembering.
Update: my mom does claim to have Mortimor. Perhaps I’ll find out for sure over the holidays.
9/8/2019
1291
Not a bad day at all! My birthday’s next weekend, so I am hoping to front-load my words this week so I can take some time off. The week after that, my partner and I are taking a trip out to Port Townsend for a long weekend...but I suspect I’ll be getting some work done out there. I like to write a bit when I travel.
Anyway...made some new plot choices today, and started shaping up a couple of things. Basically, I’m in the ramp-up for the midpoint, right before everything starts barrelling toward the conclusion. Fun shit!
Also did a real good workout, both cardio and upper body. And ate a healthy dinner.
9/9/2019
It was another tough Monday, this one made more exhausting than most by a pretty serious lack of sleep. Made it through my day job, but though I had lofty goals for doing more work, I could not get my brain back together enough to do anything. Alas.
9/10/2019
494
Split today between writing and working on some ad stuff that I’ve been avoiding. I’m already pretty sure that this is gonna be a low word-count week overall, but that’s okay. It’s my birthday week...and I really need to work on some of this ad stuff.
9/11/2019
Sigh...had a bit of a family emergency today. Still managed to get the next blog post out, though I’m so backed up in terms of how much log I have written vs. how much is actually posted that I think I might need to start posting twice a week for a while. It’s just way too easy to fall behind. Alas.
As for the family emergency...honestly, it’s still up in the air. All conditions are stable for now, but we don’t really know what’s going on. And it’s always hard to feel like I’m doing anything at all when I live half a country away. Ah well. We shall see.
9/12/2019
Still no word count. I finally started working on actual sale ads for FB today! I feel like I’ve been putting this off for a long time...because I have. The Facebook ads platform is complex, and I just feel like I’ve already made so many mistakes with it in the past that I can’t help but feel a little apprehensive about working with it. Yes, I have learned from my mistakes. And yes, I have done a bunch of research and yes, I listen to a bunch of industry podcasts and do all manner of things to keep up my education...but it’s still a tough platform, and they’ve changed it a bunch of times since I started using it, so it allllllmost feels like a whole new thing every single time.
And yet I persist. Watched a couple of lessons on it today and created two sets within a campaign. Will probably add a third on Sunday...if I have time.
Perhaps I will actually get some word count tomorrow. It could happen.
The update on the family emergency is that there isn’t one.
9/13-9/15
It was my birthday this weekend! So, yeah, I took some time off. A girl only turns 31 so many times in her life. And I suppose this girl has decided she’s cool with publishing her age on the internet. I genuinely hope I always feel that way.
I had a decent birthday, all things considered. I suppose I’ll elaborate enough on the family emergency to say that my father went to the hospital, and he is still there. We still have no definite answers on what is actually happening to him, despite his meeting with multiple neurologists. But he’s more coherent now than he was a few days ago. He almost sounds like his normal self again.
So, on my birthday, I did my best to place my worry and uncertainty somewhere outside my body, so I could enjoy myself a bit. I went to High Tea with friends at a fancy place downtown. I wore a pretty black lace dress with a slight built-in petticoat. Here are some pictures.
Iiiiiiiiiii wanna swiiiiiiiiiing—
Allusion to The Bell Jar here.
I un-ironically love a cucumber sandwich, just saying. Altho my fave here was the egg salad sandwich with caviar/roe on top. Whut.
Classy bitches wear boots.
Also, got my hair cut. For the first time in over a year. Feels nice to get rid of some of those split ends.
-Tess
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Alternately, if you’ve never heard of The Choronzon Chronicles before, but you think you might check it out, you can find the first book right here: Shadow Summoner.