March 1, 2007

Thursday, March 1, 2007
Waxing Moon
Saturn Retrograde
Mercury Retrograde
Cold and Rainy

I finally managed to get up the article “Other People’s Careers” on the Dog Blog yesterday. Can I just say how much I hate the new Blogger?

By the end of the day, you should be able to catch up on the past few days’ worth of Circadian Poems¸ finally up (I had Microsoft problems, it had nothing to do with WordPress), and the latest poetry news, and to check out Kemmyrk – and, if you have tarot questions, next Monday’s column is going to answer a few. Send them here.

Blogger’s newest annoyance, when I’m visiting friends’ blogs, is that it won’t give me the actual letters for visual verification. It simply says “visual verification” and the blank box, but not the letters I’m supposed to verify. So it takes five or six attempts to get the letters, then it tells me I didn’t enter them properly (which is total b.s.) and so on and so forth.

Why shouldn’t the spammers go through the hoops, not the legitimate readers?

Both shows were fine yesterday. Artie and I went to Whym, a fairly new eatery a little farther up Ninth Avenue than we planned to go. Décor nice. Artie chose the pork tenderloin with fig sauce, which was very good. Unfortunately, I had a quite mediocre chicken pot pie (I should have gone for the Mahi Mahi). Dessert, however, was excellent: warm chocolate cake for me and pear cobbler with cinnamon ice cream for Artie.

Chaz finally received the package (in Newcastle) with the filled Christmas stocking for his cat, Barry. Artie made the stocking and together we’d put in all kinds of things for cats to enjoy – and, according to Chaz, Barry’s enjoying it! The Royal Mail screwed up and sent it back when I’d sent it over for Christmas, but this time it got over there in only four days.

I’m reading In the Devil’s Garden, a book about food taboos arranged according to the Seven Deadly Sins. It’s fascinating, but it also makes me angry – the cruelties and the fact that so many people (and animals) have to suffer because of mentally ill rulers. It’s not a read-straight-through book or a good backstage book. I have to be able to pick it up and put it down.

Managed to catch an earlier train, which got me home at midnight instead of at 12:30. That meant I was able to get out two pitches before I went to bed last night. Keep your fingers crossed.

I can’t believe it’s already March. Here’s February’s Wrap-Up:

Done:
Query Challenge (12 queries out)
Circadian Poems
Kemmyrk
2 full weeks on the show

In Progress:
13-in-Play
Finish Chasing the Changeling
Biblio Paradise Newsletter out – Microsoft problems set this back; will go out by Mon.
Finish next Lit Athlete column – almost there
Real – did a bit of work, and then stopped
Tumble revision
“Illuminated Nude”
“The Man on the Yoga Mat”

Dropped/Postponed:
Work on DE site – I’m going to stick with this one for the moment
Revisions on Assumption of Right – I carried it around a lot, but didn’t actually start yet.
Fix-It Girl – although we talked about it at the show, and my colleagues got me excited about it again.
Typing Shallid – no time
Typing Token and Affections – no time
Restructure Thirteen Traveling Journals – ran out of time
Dixie Dust Rumors queries out – I focused on other queries instead

Additional:
The Project accepted and prep work begun
Tarot story for anthology discussed

Disappointments:
Getting sick and working on the show fulltime set everything back.

Successes:
Landing The Project
Article accepted by Notes in the Margin
Landing another steady gig

Reading:
The Tin Box by Holly Kennedy. Very good.
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton. (re-read). Excellent.
Martha Gellhorn by Caroline Moorehead (unfinished). Excellent.
Bride and Groom by Susan Conant. Good.
Dinner at Deviant’s Palace by Tim Powers (unfinished). Excellent, but pushes a lot of buttons.
Natural Enemy by Jane Langton. Very good.
Ivy Days by Susan Allen Toth. Excellent
In the Devil’s Garden by Stewart Lee Allen (unfinished). Excellent, but not an easy read.
The Easy Way to Be Brilliant at Business Writing by Suzan St. Maur (unifinished). Very good.
Noel Coward’s Diaries. Excellent.

March To-Do List:

Circadian Poems

Kemmyrk

The Scruffy Dog Review Blog

Finish Lit Athlete Article

Prep The Project

Press Release for Ink in My Coffee Third Anniversary

Biblio Paradise Newsletter out

Restructure Thirteen Traveling Journals

Craig’s List Ads for Fearless Ink

Query Challenge

13-in-Play

Write anthology story due March 31

Finish Chasing the Changeling

Finish Tumble re-vision

Type Token and Affections

Type Shallid

Start revisions on Assumption of Right

Work on The Fix-it Girl

Work on Real

Finish “Illuminated Nude”

Finish “The Man on the Yoga Mat”

Get out Dixie Dust Rumors queries

Two and a half full-time weeks on the show

Good thing March is a long month!

Devon

February 18, 2007

Sunday, February 18, 2007
Waxing Moon
Saturn Retrograde
Mercury Retrograde
Dark and cold

I’m actually posting this before I go to bed this morning, sleeping in, and turning around to take the train in for the matinee.

The shows were fine – nothing particularly frustrating; no particularly funny anecdote to share. I’m tired and tetchy, but today’s the last show before I have a week away, so it’s all good. And the situation’s perfectly pleasant – I just can’t spend that much time doing things that aren’t writing, that’s all. Not at this point in time.

I’m looking forward to getting back to the creative work on Monday. I miss those 1500 words firsts thing in the morning!

I stopped at the French bookstore in Rockefeller Center and picked up a French/English version of Molière’s Les Femmes Savantes and Alfred de Musset’s Les Caprices de Marianne. The latter was published by Bordas in 1964 and has stills from the stage production. When I’m trying to get back/get comfortable in a language, reading plays and/or magazines are easier than other things. With Les Femmes Savantes, the English is on one side and the French on the other, so I can cross-check myself.

Artie, Barbara, and I had a terrific dinner at Mantra, a new Asian fusion restaurant on Ninth Avenue, in the space that used to house our beloved OTB. The food was excellent, the presentation was beautiful, all in all, a good choice.

Tried to get some work done on The Project, but the second I opened the notebook, there were interruptions. It’s fine – I’m paid to be there paying attention, not work on other projects.

The train back was filled with drunken stupid people. Hard to concentrate.

I finished a book on the train that absolutely depressed me – I understand the motivation of one of the characters, but the choices don’t ring true to me in this day and age, and, overall, the book left me feeling blue. I don’t want to go to sleep feeling that way, so I need to counter it.

I started re-reading May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, because the opening sentence has relevance to The Project. Well, I’m 67 pages into it again, and I guess I’m reading the whole thing. Solitude and A House by the Sea are my favorites of her journals. I don’t think we would have gotten along in person – she thrived and craved far too much personal drama – but her journals have a lot of fascinating information.

I haven’t written enough this week and it’s left me feeling fractured. I could have written the past few days, but I’m trying to let the work build up so that it flows better, and I’m trying to get back my stamina from being ill.

I’m hoping the matinee will go smoothly. I have plans after for a quick drink with a friend and then I come home and resume my creative life for a week, before doing another week-and-change theatre commitment. Somehow, it will all balance out.

Now, to bed, so that I can wake up with some energy to face the matinee.

Devon