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!
6/26/2019
Got a little sick, didn’t write. It was a Wednesday date night, anyway. Also went to a small debate watch party, where I ate some truly excellent cheese. Sure, some people don’t eat cheese if they felt sick earlier in the day. But not me!
6/27/2019
Word count: 2273
I spent a good chunk of the day at a car dealership, waiting for my tires to be replaced. This turned out to be a boon for my writing, since they had a nice little waiting area where I set up with my laptop and some free coffee and got to work. Wrote 1400 words while I was there, before someone turned on not one but two televisions (turned to different things, for some insane damn reason) while I was in the restroom. I suppose I should just be happy I got the time that I did, and that none of my stuff went missing. But who turns on two televisions, side by side, to two different stations? And how am I supposed to live in this world that has such people in it?.
Anyway, I did want to make up for not getting any words in on Wednesday, so I set myself a goal of 2000 words for the day, recognizing that it was an ambitious one. But thanks to the morning of auto repair, it turned out to be relatively easy to hit...although I did have to work pretty late to get it done, which was partly because I had to work late at my regular job to make up the time loss.
All in all, a successful day. And we’re hovering around 30,000 words total so far.
Oh, I also finished reading Deadline, the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant. Damn, I’m loving this series. It’s technically a zombie story, but it’s not set during the apocalypse--it’s set 30 years later, after the world has failed to get rid of the zombies, but has otherwise rebuilt. It’s kind of more a political conspiracy thriller than anything, although it does have some really excellent worldbuilding around the zombie concept. Just all in all, really enjoying almost every aspect of it. It is written in first person instead of third, which is not what I personally prefer, but I don’t terribly mind it in this case. In fact, there is one point in particular that I think makes incredibly good use of the first person, but I can’t say it here. Go read Feed by Mira Grant if you want to know.
Cordelia knows where it’s at.
6/28/2019
Words: 475
Another Friday, and a bit of a long work day for me. Traded off duties with a coworker, which resulted in me running an errand on my way home. That wasn’t too bad in and of itself, but unfortunately there was some kind of accident on the freeway which turned my commute home into something approaching 2 hours, despite the fact that I left the office early. Ah well.
Still, over 400 words is more than decent for a Friday. I’m quite pleased at this succession of Fridays where I actually get work done. It’s nice.
Then went to a Friday hangout with the crew. We watched Cloud Atlas, and the whole damn time I kept expecting Hugh Jackman to show up and fall in love with Rachel Weisz, who also never made an appearance. A day later I realized that I’d confused it with The Fountain.
As for my review of the movie...I think it was worth watching if you enjoy dissecting a movie that was put together in a complicated way. That being said, there is a rape scene in the movie, and while I’m not sure there is a correct way to portray rape, this definitely wasn’t it. Overall, the movie is...questionable, at best, when it comes to both gender and race. And while it is interesting from a structure perspective, once you break the plot down to its component parts, each individual part is more than a little derivative and cliche.
Still, I might watch it again some day. The complicated structure of it is worth studying, regardless of my issues with the rest.
6/29/2019
Words: 1360
Decent Saturday. Maybe not the most stellar, but the rest of the week was so good (esp Thursday) that it really didn’t need to be. Took a break to watch Star Trek: the Next Generation with my partner, and to eat some food. Forced myself to stumble back upstairs and eke out a few more words after that, before collapsing into bed.
This was kind of a low-energy week for my body, and I ended up skipping my workout more often than I didn’t. I definitely plan to change that during the week to come.
6/30/2019
Word count for Sunday: 1641
Hit a decent word count. Have decided on a rough goal for every week of 4,000 words, which means I’m heading into this week with a surplus of 800 words. That’s good, since my podcast partner is coming down next weekend, so I’ll need to finish my count before the weekend. Lucky for me, I get off for July 4th and the day after.
Went to see Dark Phoenix, for the sake of said podcast. It was...really, really, really bad. Oh, X-Men, how far you have cinematically fallen. And I shall leave the rest of my thoughts for the podcast, which I’ll probably write more about in this log in the next few weeks.
Oh, I also made myself do some cardio before we left for the movie, and I’m very glad I did. It seemed to re-energize me.
Quick Author’s Note on the thumbnail image for this post: the picture is of Toni Morrison, an insanely talented writer and teacher and probably my most important artistic inspiration. She passed away this summer, and I honestly have no idea what could ever be enough to honor her memory., so I’ll settle for dedicating this post for now. If you’ve never read anything by Toni Morrison, you really don’t know what you’re missing. That is all.
-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.