Going Dark

[davidgillon]

I'm headed up to my folks in south west Durham tomorrow (Thursday) for a couple of weeks, which is something of an internet dead zone, so any chance I get to get online is likely to be intermittent and probably not conducive to DWing. So if I go suddenly silent that's from stepping back out of the 21stC, not anything dire.

Plans while I'm up there:
Sleeeeppp!
Celebrate my birthday with family
Sit down for some serious editing work on my work-in-progress urban fantasy, which needs to lose around a third of its wordcount.
Catch up on some of the books sitting waiting to be read on my kindle

Hopefully to be avoided:
Family, especially sister dearest, pitching a paddy over my asking for a referral to wheelchair services.

Comments

[davidgillon]

Remembered I can access the net via old keyboard kindle, but sloooowww.... Link has dropped out on me in past, so no guarantees it will last.

(I do have a smartphone, but use it so little there's no point having a dataplan).

Trouble-free journey north, tho stuck in train carriages for 4 hours with chattery ppl gave my misanthropy full rein to manifest as stinking headache....

Birthday meal last night, indulged my inner carnivore with 14oz gammon steak and a rather nice pint, sister dearest was justifiably less than amused her smaller steak came without any trimmings.

Am editing - editing is hard!

[davidgillon]

Looks like keyboard kindle browser can't handle the DW new post page, so I'm stuck using this thread as a sort of index for new stuff while I'm away.

One of my major aims while here is to make progress on editing my novel 'Graveyard Shift'. I aimed for 120kwords, but the first draft came in at 143kwds, and I've since learned preferred maximum length for a first urban fantasy novel is 100kwds. So that's nearly a third of the wordage to go, decimation three times over. This is proving difficult, for every three words I'm taking out it seems like I'm having to put two back for the plot points they contain. I haven't reached the spot where I can start excising entire characters and sub-plots, so it should pick up, but damn this is difficult!

I'm also realising how much alone/quiet time I need, I've almost given up on the TV this year, but parents have it on constantly. I'm spending a lot of time hiding in my bedroom, and it's difficult to judge how much is down to need for quiet and how much to need for alone time. Fairly sure my parents think I'm being anti-social, but needs must.

[davidgillon]

Still struggling on the editing :(

It strikes me as somewhat weird that I can look out the bedroom window and intermittently see my sister at work - the school where she teaches backs on to my parents, so if she's in the field....

Grrrr... making stats from Northern Echo this morning re #IndyRef and 'Barnett Formula': Gross Added Value/Head vs UK average : Scotland 98.6% North East 75.9%