Thursday, March 19, 2009

The week alone. Writing Yute, watching Watchmen, and the L word.

Thursday morning, 3 am. My wife and baby (toddler?) have been out of town since Sunday morning, and will return Saturday afternoon. They’re escorting ‘Radar’ as she checks out a couple universities on the other end of the country.
This leaves me solo for nearly a week. “I can write my head off!” I thought. Well, yes. Not as much as I thought, since I got a homework list that has eaten into my writing time. Still, it was stuff that would be difficult to accomplish with kiddo bouncing around.

A few hours were spent when I went alone to go see Watchmen. I don’t know if I’ve been to a theatre alone before. For a few moments, I worry that I looked like some lonely loser with no friends, but it was midday, and my friends have these freaky things called jobs.
Watchmen itself was really neat. Three things I heard about it were verified for me. It is NOT for kids. Do NOT see it with your parents, regardless of your age, and I can now see why they say the original comic was genius. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read it despite knowing about it for over a decade. If the movie is any indication, it is subversively political, dramatically gripping, at the same time insightful (and slightly self mocking) of superheroes.

As for Watching Yute. So far I haven’t attained the kind of page count boost I’d been hoping for this week, but what I have gotten out has been good. Freedom to churn ideas back and forth casually without the fear of a smelly diaper walking in the door, or the tight timeline of sychning meals and sleep with other people is good for creativity.

I’ve reverted to my ‘natural’ semi-nocturnal sleep cycle. (go to sleep around 4 am, wake up around noon) This means I’ll have to get back into the regulation timetable on Saturday.. I can’t decide whether to try to ease into it, or to keep going like this, and just suck it up cold turkey when the time comes.. but given it’ll be the weekend, I guess that’s a little flexible.

Anyway, the pagecount is now nearing 160, (again at a 6”x9” trade paperback format), and judging from the place in the story, it’s quite probable that Watching yute will be about the same size as 230-ish page Lifehack.
I was hoping very much to have it done for the next Vancouver sci fi convention, but taking into account time to refine, and pass through my volunteer editing staff, an October release might not be possible. We’ll see. Can’t rush it just for Vcon.

Oh, I finally saw an episode of “The L word”. As it turns out, it was the final episode of the final season. (no spoilers ahead, just in case) I knew very little of what was going on, but pieced a lot together by context. I can see why “Shane” is a fav character among many of the real life lesbians I know. Shane’s kinda hard to describe. All in all, I can’t say I liked the show. I did read that the final episode was a huge disappointment to longtime fans, but it seemed like layer upon layer of gossip, mistrust, and “she said, she said”. And for a final episode, it left a tone of loose threads untied, and unleashed a new huge mess that could have been the topic for a whole season.

I guess I’ll stick with Battlestar Galactica. There’s still a good five years left in that show, right? Right? Huh? This friday? Really? And it’s over? Oh…… ok. On to Sarah Connor then.


PS: My cat is going crazy. I don't know if it's my changes to the timetable around here, of if she misses the ladies, but the cat has gone nuts.

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