The words in my head, how they scream

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Spent my afternoon writing and I mean really writing.

Sometimes I say I’m going to writing and I end up puttering about my writing area, looking for plugins for my blog, or carrying on imaginary conversations about the mechanics of writing to imaginary people who hung on my every word. In that world, I am full of awesome. Or I’ll put the radio on and boogie mindlessly to music. A few hours later, it’d time for me to do something else and I close my computer, telling myself that I really didn’t have time to get much done anyway.

I was right sick of that.

About a month ago I bought a laptop desk from IKEA and for about a month it held my laptop all of three days. I then I recall moving the laptop into the bedroom so I could watch some episodes of Torchwood while my husband and his brother drove each other crazy for a few hours. While it was not holding a laptop, it held knitting projects, needles, notebooks, random papers I was terrified of being tossed away.

My neighbors have an unsecured wireless signal For reasons I won’t go into, I decided to move my laptop back out into the living room and put the $24.99 to the use it was spent for. I don’t have a proper chair, so I’m sitting on a cat tree that used to be two levels, but violently became one when the second level would no longer hold Loki’s girth.

I set up my little work area, and have managed to contain it all in small square footage. I could probably use some shelving or a small table, but I don’t want to clutter it. While I’m waiting on RJ, I’m actively diving into The Cat Dragged Inn, and can I tell you how hard it was to get restarted – I mean really get started?

First couldn’t remember where I’d left off. Then I remembered that so much was lost when my little gray thumbdrive when tits up, I was almost too disheartened to feel like continuing. So I set about searching for all of my CDI files. For all of my notebooks and drives and folders, I’m not very organized and all of my files were in no less that three places over the laptop and two drives. The handwritten story itself is spread over three notebooks and seventy-five (75) notecards. In order for me to be properly setup, I decided to get organized yet again. That took a few days.

I put all of my computer files in one area with a backup. I went through my Moleskines and color-coded all of them with markers across the bottom of the pages – Red for Never, Yellow for Isle of Shadows, and Blue for The Cat Dragged Inn. I then went through each chapter and wrote out a synopsis and taped it to my walls. It gives me an at a glance of what’s been written and what I still need. I plan on doing the same for Isle when I get all of the edited pages back, and Never when I’m ready to dive back into that one.

Picture of current space:

Yes, there are notebooks, pens, markers (for the chapter charting or when I feel like drawing on myself), bottled water because (I am too broke for booze), a light source, tape, a window I can gaze longingly out of when the words won’t come, and of course the backside of a cat, who makes me move every time he wants back onto his perch. Usually he indicates this by using my back as a scratching post. He thinks it’s cute.

On the wall I have two sets of chapters set up. All of my chapters are numbered in the order in which wrote them, sort of a holdvoer from NaNo 2005 when this was begun. I’ve now broken them out into past and present, since the story takes place in linear time over two time periods. As you an see, there are a lot of holes, however now I see these holes and can fill them in all pretty.

Current work count for CDI:

1,967 of those words came today, over two chapters.

I think this is what I needed – my own workspace, instead of being what amounted to a transient in my own home. Doug seems happy with it to, and that’s really important. Space is at a premium in this apartment, and I want to make sure we each have our own space. Plus he can sit next to me on the couch while I write, and even if we aren’t talking, which is likely since I’m thinking way hard, he still feels close.