Join me and the other Catholic bloggers over at ConversionDiary for our weekly Quick Takes summaries.
~1~
Firstly, in case you missed it, yesterday was my 500th post here, so I did some summing up of the past 2.5 years I’ve been working. I can’t really add anything more to that other than the hope that I can up the output and reachability of the blog over the next three years, and that people will continue to join me (and hopefully find me useful/interesting/worthy).
~2~
Lincoln tomorrow!!! That is all.
Okay, it’s also kind of funny trying to make my 21st Century gadgets into retrofuturistic objects I can use without heading too far out of character. Also, I currently have a centre parting. The right side of my forehead feels icky. It’s not used to hair.
~3~
On Monday, we went to see the animals in the local garden centre, and the weather decided to cheer a bit more than the typical British weather we had creeping in the end of the summer. Yes! *air punch* I can’t say I’ve gone out of my way to leave the house this week – and who can blame me? The outside world is scary – but I have been trying to vary my routine. This week, I’ve mostly been about writing.
~4~
Writing: I managed to do some serious paragraph threading-together for chapter one, and the first fifty pages have been my priority for this week’s editing. I haven’t really dealt with OJAP this week – though, after the weekend, I hope to actually work out what I’m doing with chapters 8, 9 and 10 now that Carrie’s not in the Josh’s-bedroom scene, and whether I can manipulate her meeting with Agnetha later in the novel to include certain lines.
I mean, some things are telling about her character, not in terms of the plot, but in terms of what I figure is important for Carrie as a wounded soul, such as, “Yeah, my parents didn’t get along, either.”
~5~
I wrote my first poem for months and months. Although I’m not going to share it yet, it’s my typical metaphorical and metaphysical, metadescriptive stuff. Yeah, I made that last word up.
~6~
Reading – this sounds like it’s randomly-placed, but it’s connected to the below – Nicole Helm’s TOO CLOSE TO RESIST. I’m about a quarter of the way through, and am really absorbed into the characters. The writing’s not as elaborate as I’m used to – but that comes from moving from fantasy to contemporary, and it’s good practise for me for my contemporary romances.
~7~
Annoyingly, I did manage to distract myself and write some new stuff – for UTC, and suddenly I have dual POV when I’d not consciously made the decision to look from Laurie’s POV to begin with. I think this is chapter two or whatever.
After waving Ceriwyn into her own room through a hollow doorway that pointlessly split A block in half, Laurie trudged to his room. September’s full moon was already reflected high in the window he passed, and it was no doubt gone 2am. Laurie always kept Ceri company as the freshers seeped out of the bar – a habit that had started the day she’d got the job in the final term last year. The same time he’d got his job organising formals, posting on the Wellington Facebook page and welcoming foreign students into their rooms at any time in the term.
Thank goodness for his childhood habit of not getting to sleep until the downstairs noises had stopped.
Laurie spun his key in the door, and shouldered his way in. A block was on the older side of Wellington, in its main quad, and thus everything had been made sound-proof and out of pre-WW1 stone.
I like Laurie. He’s a History second-year and friendly despite being sensible/not-crazy. Although he grew up in a moneyed house, he’s learnt to take events beyond their face value, which makes him a useful ally because you know what you’re getting when Laurie turns up.
Alexandrina Brant 