Considering that I didn't get around to taking a shower until after noon, I actually accomplished quite a bit today. I walked a few blocks to the surprisingly-clean cafe that I found the other day for a late lunch; my ankles were killing me, which I realized was likely a direct result of way too much vigorous foot-pedalling on the drum set for Rock Band last night. But lunch was well worth it; I had a nice sandwich while mulling over my to-do list for the next couple of weeks. I stopped at Whole Foods on the way back and picked up some fruit and tea, which meant that I could enjoy tea all afternoon while crossing things off my to-do list.
I tackled two of my messiest items, both of which I had been putting off for weeks: getting financial tracking software for myself and my romance novel 'business', and putting together a framework for collecting the research I've done for my romance novel so that I can use the same research for future books. Obviously neither of these tasks is truly pleasant, but they were both holding me back from progress on the larger goals of getting control of my finances and completing the second draft of my novel, so I'm happy that I got through them today.
On the finances side, I picked Quicken for home and business. I have a stack of receipts from my trip to London/Scotland, and anticipate having more expenses once I begin the manuscript submission process. It's important to track them all accurately so that I can a) deduct them from my taxes and b) have a true understanding of my romance novel income (if I ever make anything!) so that, if I get truly lucky, I can figure out whether it makes financial sense to quit my job someday and write full-time. That could be years or decades away, but tracking it makes it seem like a reality. After I set up the software, it helpfully pointed out that I'm living beyond my means, which it cleverly deduced from the fact that I haven't had a paycheck in almost six months and so am spending more than I'm earning. Thanks for the memories, Quicken!
On the romance research side, I'm a huge fan of Microsoft OneNote. I know this is akin to sleeping with the enemy, but I'm quite pleased with it. I already had one 'notebook' in OneNote for my personal data, another for thoughts on character development for the current series I'm working on, and one for random ideas for future romance novel series. But tonight, I fleshed out a structure for a research notebook -- I collected all of the pending questions from the current book (such as what type of carriage the girl would have arrived in, when the ban on kilts in Scotland was lifted, etc.), divided them up by subject (history, life and style, staff and horses [don't ask why these went together -- I'm just getting in the snotty mood of my characters], etc.), and created subsections for the areas that I want to delve into a bit more.
There's still work to be done, and once I get settled into Chandlord's apartment, I need to file all the paper stuff I collected in the UK. But I'm pretty happy with the structure I have, so now it's time to actually start searching for the answers to these questions.
Finally, I spent an hour browsing/reminiscing through Picasa, looking for photos that I want to print and hang. I haven't printed any photos since I got back from India, so I'm missing wide swathes of interesting stuff -- Ireland, South Africa, Ukraine, England, Scotland, and a couple of years of fun times in California and Iowa. I flagged about seventy pics that I'd like to have hard copies of, and will likely pick a few to blow up into larger, frameable pieces before I place an order in the next couple of days.
I will likely be less productive tomorrow; I have plans to see 'The Dark Knight' with Claudia's brother in the south bay, and I'll probably go down early to go to one of my favorite cafes for lunch and attempt to get some research done. And after tomorrow, I only have two weeks of freedom left before I have to go back to work. But the upside to that is that it's less than three weeks until the Olympics!!!! This of course guarantees that this autumn is going to be one of the most depressing and bleak ones I've ever faced; after getting through the awesome high of the Olympics and coasting through Labor Day to my birthday, I'll be getting settled back into the routine just in time for the shorter days and colder temperatures that always seem to get me down.
So if you've never liked the 'brooding' posts, you might want to take a break from the blog between, say, September 12 and Thanksgiving. Until then, though, it's a straight-up party!
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