Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Waning Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Venus Retrograde
A dark and stormy morning (hot, humid, and sticky, too)
Bad storms. Lots of flooding (not here yet, thank goodness). The Lincoln Tunnel is closed due to flooding; Metro North and Long Island Railroad are down; a tornado touched down in Queens.
Check out the latest installment of “Crafting Your Literary Life” on The Scruffy Dog Review Blog.
Other than that, I was one cranky bitch when I got home yesterday. 1 and 1 still has not fixed the server problem, and I’m having problems getting my business done. And then, they had the –is it balls or stupidity? – to send me a survey asking what I thought of their customer service. Use your imagination, I dare you, to guess what I told them!
Yesterday was a day of running into people, which I’m sure is better than running over them. Ran into a colleague on the train going in and we had a good chat. Caught up with everyone at the show. Am booked for 3 shows next week. Ran into another friend as I was leaving, who was visiting, and we made dinner plans for next week. Went to meet a friend for coffee and cupcakes, and we ran into another friend who joined us. Quite the social day! It was all lots of fun, and it’s always good to catch up with people.
Didn’t feel like eating when I got home – it was too hot.
Since it doesn’t look like the workmen are ever going to show up again to finish the mess they started in the front hall – let’s see, is it six weeks, now? — I decided to put the hallway back together myself. Get my little bits and pieces back where I want them. And now I’m going to get a picture to hang in front of the hole they were supposed to cover when they ripped the buzzer box out of the hall and added the new one in the kitchen – which, by the way, doesn’t work.
Oh, and the city council of one town upriver has approved the condo development guaranteed to worsen our flooding (even though they pretend it won’t). It’s about more than property damage – these dickheads are putting people’s lives in danger, and all so they can get a few more cents on property taxes. Of course, this is the community that created itself twenty years back or so because the town to which they belonged wasn’t a “prestigious” enough zip code, so what do you expect? That they’d give a shit about anyone but themselves? If our so-called “Flood Action Committee” had any balls, they’d start a class action suit for reckless endangerment, but they don’t.
A good long core workout and meditation helped last night, as did a good yoga session this morning.
Spent some time working on a business plan for a new, large project. The planning has to be meticulous in order for it to work. It could be fun, and, while it won’t be huge money, I think I could at least bring in enough to make it worthwhile. That was a big thing – to price it correctly. My original idea had a good advertising platform, but the price was so low I resented it. I short-changed myself. I upped the price to something that was still low enough to be attractive to a wide audience, but high enough so I wouldn’t get in a snit, and came up with a new ad campaign that I think works even better.
One of the pitchees came back and wants to me to write a test article, without guaranteed pay. And they haven’t answered any of my questions. Ding, ding, ding go the warning bells. I will re-send the questions and politely ask them to respond. However, unless they guarantee payment , there’s no reason I should write for strangers on spec.
Next!
Good session on Good Names –we’re still at the racetrack. Decent day’s morning’s work on ”Revenge Tangents”. The next section needs a lot of description – I have to sit down and really think about it as I’m writing, visualize it, because the sense of place, the actual house in the piece is a character.
Lots to do today. Confidential Job #1 sent the next assignment. It looks good. I have to finish the critique on a colleague’s synopsis, work on a short article for a mag on which I’m a bit behind, pitch an idea to another mag that wants material from me, do a short article for someone else’s newsletter, work on the profiles/interview requests, and get to work on another article due at the end of the month, but if I don’t finish it by next week, when all hell breaks loose, it will be late.
I’d like to get some work done on Tracking Medusa, but I have to clear this other stuff off my desk first.
Better hop to it.
Someday, the humidity will lessen and I will be so much pleasanter!
Devon
Good Names – 56,882 words out of est. 100,000
“Revenge Tangents” — 5,624 words out of est. 7,500