Seriously, progress! or else!

[laylah]

The day after my last post I woke up at 3am with a miserable earache, so I spent Saturday morning in urgent care getting a prescription for antibiotics and cough syrup with codeine. People say that's "the good stuff," but eh. It made me a little dizzy, is all. But I am at least sleeping a little better and no longer having terrifying coughing fits on a regular basis.

I'm now coming right down to the wire on one of the submission calls I wanted to meet this fall, and also coming up on the date when I'm supposed to hear back on a story I have out right now. Here's hoping for good luck on both fronts in the next few days! My plans for the weekend are fairly low-key, so I really just need to get my act together and focus on turning the rest of this outline into prose.

Any minute now.

ETA: I also keep stalling on things like "How hungry would you have to be before you were willing to try dog food?" QUESTIONS MY CHARACTERS WISH I DIDN'T NEED ANSWERS TO.

Comments

[askerian]

D:

NO NO IGNORE THE SIREN CALL OF THE INTERNET

... i'm not helping with the comment alert here, am I. Whoops.

[laylah]

hahahah the worst part is, I have one of those "temporarily disconnect your net access" programs, and I can't bring myself to fire it up. Someone could be posting something somewhere! I need to know!!!

orz.

[askerian]

Haha. I feel you. My excuse for not even downloading one is that I need to use thesaurus.com and wikipedia when I write yes really I do, cannot put in a star and say ((COME BACK AND FILL LATER)).

But still! You need to go forth and write awesome things. Is there something you're not sure of/enthusiastic about the story itself?

[laylah]

Wikipedia has been the best distraction from making words happen, omg.

Mostly I'm at the point where I keep fiddling about details! (See edit about dog food, above; also, what kind of animal could an untrained person take down with a high-quality kitchen knife?) I took yesterday off from prose and tried to just write out the sequence of still-to-come events in more detail, so I ought to have enough to keep me going. I just trip myself up all the time. XD

[askerian]

It depends if they can make themselves accept that dog food is... pretty much just normal if not great meaty bits and a dog has NOT slobbered over it before it was even open somehow. >___> It is also not made of dead cats or shoes or other dogs' feces or anything weird a dog might find tasty.

Probably it'd take until they're pretty hungry AND aware that they're not going to get any other food anytime soon! XD; idk. It helps if the character is the type to do weird or counterculture things, you can chalk it up to "i'm a rebel, let me gross you ouuuut".

Wikipedia is evil like that. You take a short look at something and then it's two hours later and you have twenty tabs open.

[laylah]

Yes. Two hours later and you're telling somebody about a zeppelin crash in 1922 that is so interesting and has nothing whatsoever to do with your current story but omg! Also, check out this page devoted to the history of underwear!

The internet provides such high-quality distraction material. ^^

[julian_griffith]

I know some folks who suggest Gainesburgers as survival rations in a go-bag. Nourishing, if you're stuck in snow or hiking in adverse weather conditions in order to reach safety, but not APPEALING, like chocolate-covered energy bars, so you won't snarf them down in the first ten minutes. I have considered this for a car emergency kit, though mostly I keep a single-serving tuna-and-crackers kit in the glove box, which is much better for my ACTUAL emergencies, which are "forgot to eat lunch and won't get through my 6-9pm class without some protein."

[laylah]

I have gotten such great responses from people on the dog food question. On plurk a couple of my friends got into a discussion about which flavor of milk bones was the tastiest. XD

...I can't blame you for going the tuna-and-crackers route instead, though. Seems much more appealing for the everyday small emergencies.

[julian_griffith]

Tuna for the glove box, Luna bars for the purse. *g*