Daily word count:  935

Total word count:  48,036

I shushed a man today.

I was trying to buy an item from a store catalogue. I had tried my local store and found they had none on the shelves, there was none in stock (out the back), they couldn’t order it in for me, and couldn’t get it sent over for me from another store that they could tell from their ever so convenient computer system had TWO of the item I wanted.

Note that there was a good dozen of those ‘take this tag to the cashier’ tags. It sure looked like they had them for sale.

“Why was it in the catalogue, then?” I asked the cashier.

The man rolled his eyes.

“Story of your life, eh?” I supplied.

He told me which stores had stock. I worked out which one was closest to me, and the next morning I phoned it to make sure they still had the item.

When the man answered the phone and asked what I wanted, I said, “I’m just checking if you still have an item from the most recent catalogue.”

I expected him to say a lot of things, what I did not expect him to say, was, “What’s a catalogue?”  %$

I explain.

Everyone in the room is now actively listening.

He put me on hold.

Now, while I’m on hold, I’m processing the conversation and I get that what he is doing is asking someone which department to put me through to, to help with my enquiry about catalogues.

Oh, dear. We’ve gone seriously awry here.

I wait…

He comes back on the line and he launches into a hurried explanation about how he doesn’t know which department deals with catalogues, and I say, “Shush.” I honestly didn’t know how else to stop him.

He stops talking.

Every head in the room turns.

“Wearable fitness items,” I say very clearly. &&

He puts me through without another word.

Kid 2 looks at me. “Mum… you shushed someone.”

I explained. I had to stop him before he wasted more of his time.

Look, I don’t know… Maybe it was his first day; maybe the call interrupted him doing something else; maybe he hadn’t had enough coffee. I know I hadn’t – it was early-ish. Maybe he was tired of people calling about that particularly rare and half priced item?

 

%$ what SHOULD I have called it? Mail out? Junk mail? I don’t know.

&& New step counter. That cow stole at least 2 kilometres from me in the last 12km hike that it swore was only 10km long. It’s going in the bin.

 

Daily word count:  4,376

Total word count:  47,102

Not a bad day.

My desk is in the corner of a large room. I have a standing desk as well but what I don’t have is the space to put up things on the walls. I love index cards but I can’t spread them out anywhere at the moment.

The dining table is currently occupied by a four person Warhammer 40k game…

Sighs.

Months ago I picked up three super light corkboards from Kmart – one for each Act. But then I didn’t know what to do with them; I had nowhere to hang them on the wall. But, I had an idea. I thought I might be able to hang them off an Ikea Ivar book ends that slide onto the shelves and voila… it worked. If I hang them sideways.

In a truly mind hurting example of my brain function, I wrote out the Romance Beat sheet cards from the Gwen Hayes book, and then edged them in washi tape that matches the colours of the Scrivener template she also gives you in a link in the e-book. Purple, red, teal, and orange. Then I dug in the jar and found push pins in colours to match, as well.

Why, brain, why?

Is the rest of my life this terrifyingly organised? No, of course not. *rolls eyes at self*

Given this particular nanowrimo project is a last minute, non plotted pile of words, with a lot of super helpful notes like: then Oliver %% whatever his damn name is said,

OR %% father’s GF,

OR %% make sure you lampshade this earlier;

Or whatever convoluted and vague notes I’ve left for myself, it will take some work to disentangle it. It’s not even in any kind of chronological order. I will have to sit down with the 50k I’ve written and work out what goes where, what can be kept, or edited, and what scenes are missing. And that’s why I’ll need those index cards.

But with less than 3k words left, I’m going to make it, which is 50k words more than I had at the start of the month.

And I saw ANOTHER idea for the file box.

A Japanese woman hired an actor to pretend to be the father of her daughter. After ten years, the daughter still does not know, he is not her real father.

WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING? I swear I’ve read that fanfic. But really, how do you even start untying that Gordion knot. Does he care about the girl? Does he want to be her father? Can they get married now and live happily ever after?

So many questions…

And funnily enough, my nano project is about fake dating, doubling down on the lie, and then how you go about starting to fix it when it inevitably goes wrong.

Links:

‘I hired a man to pretend to be my daughter’s dad – and she doesn’t know’

Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels (How to Write Kissing Books Book 1) by Gwen Hayes

Daily word count:  0

Total word count:  41,842

I wrote 7,692 words in another project. I know… I know… believe me I am already shouting at myself.

Life with an ADHD brain – episode one million, eight hundred thousand…

The other day I saw an email from a kitchen supply place and it listed a Kugelhopf Pan. I have no idea what that is, so I search it. A few minutes later I’m watching videos on how to make a Kugelhopf cake in your Kugelhopf pan and one minute into that I’m printing out the recipe and searching in the cupboard to see if I have all the ingredients.

Note, at this point I still do not own a Kugelhopf pan. But I reckon a Bundt tin will work just as well, eh?

These women are complaining that making yeast bread is hard. Omg. Have they not ever made cinnamon scrolls? This is just a chocolate version of them stuffed in a Bundt tin. And it’s the easiest thing to make yeast dough in the bread maker.

Quote me on this when I put up a shot of my ugly baking attempts.

Okay, today I am making the Kugelhopf… and it doesn’t look too bad. It liked the bread maker so much there was a chance the dough was going to overflow. But, there was definitely not enough flour in that recipe, so I folded in a bit more before it was stable enough to roll and spread with chocolate.

It got eaten pretty quickly but most tasters thought the cinnamon scroll dough was nicer. Next idea: make a frankenKugelhopf with dough from the other recipe or make chocolate scrolls?

Mmmm chocolate.

And in more articles for the idea file, I saw a story about the provenance argument over a Brett Whiteley painting. It’s titled ‘the artist’s mother’ but it seems like it isn’t Whiteley’s mother, nor is he the artist. Intriguing. There’s a lot of what ifs that could come from that.

Who painted it? Is it a self-portrait and a large hint? What if it’s his real mother?

 

Links:

A mysterious painting – the artist’s mother

 

 

Daily word count:  612

Total word count:  41,842

I wandered off and wrote words in another project. Goddammit brain, get back here and finish this thing that you started!

I am also listening to the audiobook – Time Travel: A History by James Gleick. It’s fascinating.

Some really huge concepts and it seems to be sucking up my brain power. Leaving me with a very long list of things I clearly need to find and read.

I once tried to write a work of my own that ended up wrestling with time travel issues… and you’ll be unsurprised to hear it’s one of my trunked novels.

I do remember running a scrapbooking workshop years ago when we lived in Jakarta. Kid 1 wandered in and asked, “Mum, what’s the fourth dimension?”

He was six.

“It’s time, honey.”*

“Huh?”

“You know there are three dimensions or axes. Let’s say this coffee cup is an object – we can note its place within space by how high it is off the ground and by how far away it is from that wall, and also how far away it is from that wall. Height, breadth, depth. Three axes. But we also need to note how it moves over time… if I drink and then put it down over here… then it has changed its position over time.”

I demonstrated.

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Is there a fifth dimension?”

“Probably, but I don’t know what it is.”**

A longer pause. “So, if we could go to the fifth dimension, then we could travel through time?”***

“Theoretically, yes.”

“Huh.” He took several exaggerated steps towards the kitchen door. “I am moving into another dimension!” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Okay, honey. Make sure you close the door behind you.”

I looked up to see a room full of women staring at me; mouths agape.

Life with an Asperger’s kid, I tell you…

 

*His year one teacher told me that it was my fault that he was the way he was. Excuse me? He asks you a question, and you tell him the answer. I honestly had no answer to that. Wtf?

** I asked a friend about this, and he said the fifth dimension was basically the fourth dimension crumpled up upon itself. Naturally, I told kid 1 that later.

***years later I asked Kid 1 where he got this idea from and he said The Powerpuff Girls cartoon. Idk… maybe??? He, of all people, never forgets anything [that he cares about – tidying up after himself? Not so much…].

In Gleick’s novel he talks about how our first exposure to the theories of time travel is often via children’s cartoons. Donald Duck invents the wheel, or whatever.

Daily word count:  1,452

Total word count:  41,230

Hmmm… I have to write like 900 words a day to get it done on time. Easy, she says… quote me on this later. I am collecting all the 4theWords monsters by typing up my hand written notes from doing Tim Clare’s Couch to 80k writing bootcamp. Do I have 80k of words? I will soon know. What I do have are some neat ideas I had forgotten I wrote.

It’s very strange to read something in your own handwriting and have no memory of where it came from.

Seriously, if you get an idea, WRITE IT DOWN.

Speaking of ideas, another one for the file marked ‘idea idea idea’, I saw an article about a small town offering the local pub as the prize in a contest with $100 entry fee.

Rather than sell The Shirley Robyn and Allan Cox have asked people to pay $100 to put forward an idea for the Victorian building.

After a three-month tender process the building will be handed over to the applicant who has the best plan for the pub.

Besides the adorable name, the pub is called The Shirley, what happens to the person with the great idea who gets handed a whole pub with a functioning bed and breakfast? In a small town of 414 people? One of the ideas is a shelter for domestic violence victims. Oh now, the plot bunnies are hopping.

Speaking of bunnies, Lou’s theme from the art exhibition was hares. [Look – it’s close enough to a decent segue. Don’t @ me]

It is okay to put her art here with a link. She uses Instagram until her website is up and running. Now that is a headache I understand.

Links:

Tim Clare couch to 80k

Hotel Shirley

Lou Young art – website  – instagram

 

Daily word count:  1,655

Total word count:  39,778

Not bad. I did some garden chores. Why do I always forget that wielding the electric hedge trimmer over my head to get the bushes that overhang the clothesline, always makes my arms shake for … I want to say days? I will never have Michelle Obama’s arms.

It’s hard to type if your arms don’t work.

[Remember this next time, AM] Luckily I got the words in before I wandered off.

And then I mowed the lawn … and coincidentally ran over all the garden clippings. I reckon a lawnmower is just a big sharp vacuum cleaner.

Later I headed off with kid 3 to see the final exhibition for Sydney College of the Arts students. Kid Extra was helping a friend out with her honours project. It looked amazing.

The campus is set up in what used to be the Callan Park Lunatic Asylum for the Mentally and Criminally Insane. It was built between 1878 and 1884 and is mostly sandstone. Seriously half of Sydney is built out of sandstone. Thanks Sydney basin.

Naturally the current NSW government is trying to sell it to developers. Recently the students had a sit-in and won a reprieve. It stays, for now.

Have an out of focus shot of the clock tower. I felt like it was wrong to put shots of people’s art up here without their permission.

 

Links

College of the Arts

Callan Park Hospital for the Insane