Field Notes

 Matt's home! He's finally here!

I picked him up at 1:30 in the morning on Saturday, and we stayed up until 4. I had, of course, planned ahead, and taken naps earlier in the evening. But it was this ... instant connection, like we'd never been apart. Then, on Saturday, we spent most of the day lazing around. I got some writing done, he caught up on the Internet (after not having it most of his time away), we went for a hike, went to a barbeque. I love even just lazing around with him - it feels like I've been on vacation.

I was starting to get really worried toward the end of our time apart - nervous that things had changed somehow, or that he was getting fed up with me, or that there was something wrong in our relationship. No, it just turns out that 8 weeks apart is a really long time, especially when your partner doesn't particularly like opening up on the phone.

I'm relieved, and happy to have him back. 

The last couple of days, we've had terrible air quality because of the wildfires in Canada. I think today it's finally starting to clear up. I'm still facebook friends with a professor from college (anthropologist that studies China primarily) who said that our air quality was actually WORSE than Beijing's yesterday. 

That's ... wow.

Writing has been going spectacularly well. I'm actually ahead of my Camp NaNo goals, and the words just keep coming. I've got a trip planned for later in July, so it would be nice to be at least three days ahead before that. Unless, of course, I finish the novel before I hit 30,000 new words - which is looking more and more like a possibility.

Though I have to say, in order to write this much this quickly I'm really swallowing my fear of the editing process. I hit 300 manuscript pages - and immediately after the celebrations, I thought "oh fuuuuuck now I'm gonna have to rewrite over 300 pages".  I am excited to tackle that process, but also ... wow. I've never had to edit anything on this scale before.

Fanfic is interesting - I've been thinking about that a lot. When I was writing fanfic, I definitely didn't plan it out as much as I've planned out this novel, but I meticulously edited it as I go. It was all about getting each chapter up to speed. I suppose, if I had a strict plot outline, I could write this that way too. But I don't trust my original fiction - I'm assuming that everything will change once it's done.

And it has changed a lot over the course of my writing this. 

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

 Not much has changed.

Currently reading "Brave New World" b. Aldous Huxley. It's amazing terrifying amazing.

I've officially wrapped up the gig on the march, so now I'm contacting my network and putting some feelers out there for temp work to carry me through until school starts. 

Matt is still not back. Trying not to dwell on Things and Feelings.

Getting some good writing done. Camp NaNo with syntaxofthings starts on Wednesday - we have a write-in planned already! My goal is to EITHER finish the work in progress OR write 30,000 new words. But if I finish the manuscript before I hit 30,000, that will be a huge landmark. 

That's a little under 1,000 words/day, which actually seems really doable for the pace I've been writing these days. It's more about finding the time to get in the writing mindset, which isn't always easy. But if I hit the writing hard this week, I'll get ahead of myself before my next temp thing kicks in. 

Today's word count: Something like 700. Not bad, considering how weird today's been.