Friday, August 28, 2009

WIP Wednesday...On Friday

I'm back! Miss me? No? Then why has everyone decided to add pink to my blog? More on that in posts to follow...

Thank you to everyone for the nice thoughts and comments (and sudden influx of awards).

As for my WIP, aka Nathan Steele, Book 1, (there will be a catchy subtitle here but I haven't found it yet - you're writers, use you're imagination ;c)).

Tuesday night I flew out to Melbourne for work. At least, I eventually flew out to Melbourne after my flight was delayed twice due to unusually high winds at my destination. Strangely the flight was very smooth and my stay was punctuated with only the occasional light breeze while on other sides of the city trees were being uprooted - very strange.

Still, I didn't get to the hotel until midnight on my first night in so my premonition that I'd not get any writing done that night proved correct and I practically fell into the hotel bed. The actual course I went there for was very good and the instructor was exceptional as well as being a nice guy - in short, it was one of the only courses I've been on, for work, in the recent past that I actually learned anything.

Night two arrived and I walked down to the nearest Subway for dinner, walked back to the hotel and setup my laptop on the nice little work table in the hotel room. It was terrible. It was the wrong height to work comfortably. My shoulders were killing me in no time. So I moved to the large comfortable chairs - better for my back and shoulders but the arm rests were too close to my body and trying to keep my elbows locked in grew old very quickly - I'm not a particularly lean fellow. So I moved to the floor - that lasted about 10 seconds. On to the bed, but the power cord didn't reach that far so I was on battery power with built in smoko breaks to ensure I didn't run out. Unfortunately the hotel is smoke free so smoko meant putting the laptop on charge and riding the elevator down and going outside into the cold night air.

In the end, I managed a paltry 1489 words, about 3K short of what I was hoping for. I just couldn't get comfortable or into the right frame of mind. I saved it and watched Angels & Demons from the inhouse movie menu (work was paying after all). The total for the week ended up being 3212 words. A little short of Cate's brilliant effort, but not too bad for me. I'm happy with it.

I'll stick to writing at home or at work from now on where the desk is the right height, the chairs are comfortable, and having a smoke doesn't involve descending four floors and having dodgy looking taxi drivers stare at you.

It's wonderful to be home.

Cue the Bean:


3 comments:

  1. I'm so glad I quit smoking. What a pain: cost, marginalization, wheezing. I miss the dodgy taxi drivers stares, though. Just kidding, none around here good story fodder, I imagine.

    I work best at my own desk too. Something about the routine and the view.

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  2. At least your WIP is going to hit 50,000 (probably more) mine's beginning to struggle for words.

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  3. Bec - I've given up a few times, but my wife doesn't appreciate me when I keep telling her to clean her teeth before I'll kiss her. So we both smoke and I'll not be giving it away until she decides to. It just won't work with only one of us doing it.

    Cate - Not sure about getting to 50k at the moment. I'm fast approaching a point where a major reveal is going to happen and then it seems like it's all downhill to the end from there. I'm thinking that needs to be a fairly short slope so I may not be that far from running a little empty myself.

    Here's hoping we both find that twist which will allow us to move forward.

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