Mindfulness
Jan. 15th, 2012 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clarentineYou know that Chinese curse about living in interesting times? Well, I just want to know who cursed me. Really, I could take being bored for a week or two. It wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.
(Don't worry; there is no imminent major crisis, just an avalanche of smaller ones. I'm buried.)
***
I hope everyone has been paying mindful attention to the lengthening daylight. We are less than a month past Midwinter, the shortest day of the year, and already the increase in day length is noticeable. It's not quite pitch black when I arrive home after work. I'll take some small reassurance from that, especially when it's as cold as it has been lately.
The chickens are responding to the increase in different ways. I'm getting a steady five eggs a day, six some days. And one of the hens has decided to go broody. Silly bird. No rooster means no chicks. I've been pushing her off the nest, making her go feed and water herself. I suppose that, if I ever did want to hatch out chicks, I now know which hen would volunteer.
***
Thanks to the nose-to-the-grindstone habit required to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
novel_in_90's daily 750-word quota, I've made really significant progress in the novel going under the working title of Switchback. Better, I'm hitting all the marks the three-act structure would tell you need to be in place: first turning point came at 125 pages, and the midpoint finally wrapped up at page 278. (That was one massive scene, and boy, was it the setpiece the books all talk about.) My drafty outline is standing firm--and no one is more surprised about that than me. I am so very much not an outlining kind of writer.
I guess we'll wait and see where the second turning point comes, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
(Don't worry; there is no imminent major crisis, just an avalanche of smaller ones. I'm buried.)
***
I hope everyone has been paying mindful attention to the lengthening daylight. We are less than a month past Midwinter, the shortest day of the year, and already the increase in day length is noticeable. It's not quite pitch black when I arrive home after work. I'll take some small reassurance from that, especially when it's as cold as it has been lately.
The chickens are responding to the increase in different ways. I'm getting a steady five eggs a day, six some days. And one of the hens has decided to go broody. Silly bird. No rooster means no chicks. I've been pushing her off the nest, making her go feed and water herself. I suppose that, if I ever did want to hatch out chicks, I now know which hen would volunteer.
***
Thanks to the nose-to-the-grindstone habit required to meet
novel_in_90's daily 750-word quota, I've made really significant progress in the novel going under the working title of Switchback. Better, I'm hitting all the marks the three-act structure would tell you need to be in place: first turning point came at 125 pages, and the midpoint finally wrapped up at page 278. (That was one massive scene, and boy, was it the setpiece the books all talk about.) My drafty outline is standing firm--and no one is more surprised about that than me. I am so very much not an outlining kind of writer. I guess we'll wait and see where the second turning point comes, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
