Progress report of a sort

Okay, so I finally got off my divot and transferred my soon-to-be-released free book into MSWord 7 ‘cause that’s the only editor that exists for the nice folks at Smashwords 9_9

Now I’m just waiting for @xotxot to get back to me about the cover.

I’m getting nervous. As I usually do when my success at a plan is entirely dependant on someone else. I’ve had plans of mine fail purely because someone I was depending on couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t feel like doing me a favour.

The question I put to you is:

Should I concoct a cover in my typical Suck-O-Vision limited Inkscape skills, just in case? Or should I have faith that it will all work out somehow?

A call for volunteers

You’ve had some free samples of my writing [check the #story tag in my posts] and now I’m looking for Beta Readers because it’s just occurred to me that handing out stories for free before I try to sell them might just be a bad business plan.

So. Does anyone out there with sharp reading eyes wish to subject themselves to the alpha drafts of whatever the heck my warped mind concocts next?

I’m taking my time with the sewer level.

It’s almost a month later, and I’m still working on this thing. As I write this [24 Mar] I am STILL stuffing dispensers with brownish objects and occasional representative junk.

And by “representative junk”, I mean: leather for dead animals, raw fish for fish, empty bottles, string, lilly pads, grass, iron fences, gravel, slime balls and pieces  of paper. Because it’s not just poo and wee that winds up in our drains, ya know.

Oh, and the odd stack of silverfish eggs ‘cause I want this sewer to be overrun with “rats”.

In the process of building this thing, I up and decided to add some interesting titbits about sewers and sanitation into the entire labyrinth. I now know more about such things than a mere mortal really should.

Except for one thing. As an Aussie, I felt I had to add a bit of trivia concerning sanitation in our fair country. As an internet dweller, I could not find one crumb of such info. I asked MeMum [Hi!] who is old enough to remember life before television(ghasp), and also recalls a few things about when sewers actually came in.

I picked on Sydney because it’s the one city in Australia everyone knows about. That also doesn’t possess an identically-named city somewhere else in the world. I know from movies that “night soil carts” [look it up] were employed in Sydney and other Australian cities as late as the 1960’s, and my fellow Brisbanites were joking about sewering certain suburbs in the '70’s.

The closest she could guess [in between repeated enquiries as to whether I’d looked EVERYWHERE - and Yes, I have.] was the 1970’s.

Does anyone similarly fecaly fascinated have a firmer date[Full credit is all I can offer, alas]?

Slowly Getting There

I took an actual day off, today. Well, most of a day off.

Possibly 50% of a day off.

Because a Mum’s work is never done. I can’t have a complete day off.

The dog got out and I had to go catch him. Invisible fences are looking increasingly attractive right now.

And I spent the afternoon teaching Mayhem (my eldest) that playing with the dog is fun.

That was exhausting. But fun.

But I didn’t get any writing done. Not one word. Not one line. Not even in a fanfic.

OTOH, I did get a whole page done, yesterday. At the pace I go at, that’s lightening speed.

When I write, I sometimes have pages and pages of ideas battling for priority. Sometimes it’s a battle to get one sentence out.

In the latter occasions, I need a break to let some more ideas percolate through my skull. Sometimes I just veg in front of the TV. Sometimes it’s Minecraft. Most of the time, it’s fanfic.

Today, I just slugged in front of the PC for half the day. Zen and the art of fartarsing around.

I did absolutely nothing and I loved it.

Why are the most enjoyable things the things that wind up wasting our time?