Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
26 July 27 July 28 July 29 July	Second draft of “Anne’s Big Day”.	1057 typed words (that’s rather more like it!).	TWSBI Diamond 580 ALR Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Parker Senior Duofold Platinum PKB-3000	TWSBI Royal Purple Jentle blue-black Diamine Honey Burst Edelstein Topaz

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Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
19 July 20 July 21 July 22 July	Second draft of “Anne’s Big Day”.	590 typed words.	Platinum PKB-3000 Montblanc 32 TWSBI Diamond 580 ALR Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird	Edelstein Topaz Montblanc Racing Green TWSBI Royal Purple Jentle blue-black

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
11 November 12 November 13 November 14 November	The Yearly Remembrance Weep First draft of “Grand Finale” First draft of “Vacation Slides” More health care stuff	Copious Six manuscript pages. Four manuscript pages. A prescription!	Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Wing Sung 3013 Lamy Studio Sheaffer Imperial Triumph	Jentle blue-black Edelstein Topaz Herbin Violet Pensée Skrip black

 

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
4 November 5 November 6 November 7 November	I may have taken a day off. Third draft of “Whistling Through the Graveyard”. Some non-writing stuff to do with last week’s alarming note. First draft of “Grand Finale”	No sleaves (sic) unravelled, alas. Polished and fit to present. Questions answered, future appointments made. Six manuscript pages.	Waterman L’Étalon Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Sheaffer Imperial Triumph Wing Sung 3013… which I need to build a page for, it seems	Diamine Bilberry Jentle blue-black Skrip black Edelstein Topaz

 

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Parker Duofold TWSBI Classic Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Pelikan M30	Herbin Bleu Nuit Diamine Oxford Blue Herbin Lie de Thé Diamine Evergreen	2,021 words typed

I notice a couple of things.  Yesterday was the start of NaNoWriMo, and tomorrow is the anniversary of my first word on paper for this novel.  There’s a connection, of course, because I arbitrarily set the start of the latter to co-incide with the former, and then buggered up my own timing slightly.  I continue to be pleased that I said NawNoHeyNo to the prospect of trying to finish in a month, because that expectation would have me feeling like a colossal failure by now.

The other thing I notice is that my word count for the week is low, thanks to the Hallowe’en thing I did over on my other front.  Not colossal failure, but it’s not helping the cause; I believe I’ll be doing some extra work tonight and tomorrow to advance things.  All the same, very nearly half-done the current draft, so the nebulous early- to mid-February finish line remains in place.

Imitations of Mortality

It’s practically here!  The most funnest day of the year!

If, like me, you’re not interested in going out to a bar and watching people in Sexy (Insert Profession) costumes destructively testing their livers, may I suggest a movie?  Here’s a couple.  The first is short and… kinda splattery.

The other is just the thing to fill an evening.  I’ll be wearing a costume labelled “Sexy 1950s British Television Licence Payer (xxxl)” while I hunker down for this one:

If you have access to the all-colour Hammer version and somehow haven’t seen it, you really should set aside a couple of hours.

Today’s slightly thematic, in terms of name and vintage, pen: Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird
Today’s potentially mood-setting ink: Herbin Lie de Thé

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Pilot Vanishing Point Parker 50 Pelikan M30	Herbin Lie de Thé Montblanc Royal Blue Skrip Black Diamine Evergreen	2,901 words typed

Hey, that’s a more productive week!  Since we’re getting close to the anniversary of this project, now is as good a time as any to announce:  This project will absolutely be finished long after we pass that anniversary.  Earlier optimism on this point was unfounded, and now that I’ve got a strong sense of my weekly output… February *mbbl*th is the likely completion date.  Not what I’d hoped, but given the tiny slice of time I can apply to the matter, I’m actually feeling pretty good about that.

Speaking of feeling pretty good, and to wrap up a slightly loose end from last week.  Doctor seen, x-rays taken, and the verdict is– if the knee is sore, put on a brace for a while, and take a mild anti-inflammatory (which most popular over-the-counter pain relief is).  No other treatment needed.  I may yet dance!

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Pelikan M30 (and a drumstick) Sheaffer Targa Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Pilot Vanishing Point	Diamine Evergreen (plus some gravy) Pelikan Violet Herbin Lie de Thé Montblanc Royal Blue	793 words typed

That’s a pretty weak showing for the week. Let me explain, and perhaps even justify.  Monday was Thanksgiving up here in the Great White North, and that meant I was paddling about the house doing important house stuff prior to heading to my in-laws’ place for the traditional attempt to eat enough to last out the whole winter.  And that meant no writing.

But wait!  There’s more!  Today, indeed even as this entry is being posted by cool and unsympathetic electronic hands, I am off to see my doctor.  You may remember that in December and then again in April I mentioned having wrenched the crap out of my knee.  Up until the last week of September, I would have told you that I was pretty much recovered from this.  Mid-way through that week, for absolutely no reason I could notice, the knee was all inflamed and painful again; no new acrobatics, no attempted heroics, not even inclement weather.  That became the point at which I allowed common sense to overcome self-destructive idiotic laziness; I made an appointment to have it looked at.

Given the intermittent use of Canada’s handling of health-care in the debate over how things might be re-arranged in the US, I’m going to talk about this astonishing delay for a moment. I will admit that the distance between making the appointment and its arrival is somewhat inconvenient, although the leg is back to being merely somewhat sore.  However, I don’t want anyone to point at this and shout, “There!  See the horrible toll TEH SOCIALIZISMS takes on those poor benighted fools in Canada!” Here’s my take on this delay–

First of all, my doctor is quite good, popular and getting to be of an age where he wants to work less than five days a week; this makes for a full calendar.  Given that the most recent injury was five months ago, I can hardly call this an emergency, and even if I did call it an emergency, it’s not an Emergency Room emergency.  I could have, if moved by relentless agony, have sat for a couple of hours in any one of a number of open clinics around the city, and have my problem seen to by a competent if unfamiliar doctor (and thus left the emergency room less burdened by dummies like me and able to concentrate on people in authentic serious emergency trouble).  The delay is the price I pay for insisting on seeing the doctor I have chosen… which we can do here in Canada, honest.

Importantly, whether I wait several hours in an ER (because triage would put me waaaaay down the list of people needing attention), a couple of hours at a clinic, or a couple of weeks while the line of many satisfied patients my doctor enjoys cycles through to me, I am not paying for it.  Yes, I am paying for it through taxes, and that’s fine with me, because I’d be paying taxes anyway, and at about the same rate if I lived in neighbouring North Dakota, the same way I’m paying for police and fire departments and all that other stuff that people forget about when they complain about taxes.  However, my experience today will include no billing– I enter, I am probed, I get medical advice on my physical state, I leave and that’s that.  If I am sent for x-rays, same deal, but with extra radiation.  If the doctor tells me to come back in a month to see how I’m getting on, then it’s the same deal again.  If I have to start a long series of treatments because he notices I have a powerful and long-simmering case of The Spon Plague, then it’s still the same deal.  Watch as carefully as you like, as no time will my wallet leave my pocket.

I think that’s a pretty good deal, and certainly worth the .  I don’t know why people in the US resist it so fiercely (other than that they’ve been convinced by the people who make money off their system that it’s the only way to roll).

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Parker 50 Pelikan M30 Pilot Vanishing Point	Herbin Lie de Thé Skrip Black Diamine Evergreen Montblanc Royal Blue	2,977 words typed

I applied a little thought (uh-oh) to the pace of work, and it appears I’m not going to have something to dangle in front of publishers and/or agents until late January at earliest.

Sigh.

But, as the movie said, if you rush a miracle man, you get lousy miracles.

New Format!

The exclamation point makes it exciting!

For those who are actually enjoying these progress reports, I have another version of telling the whole world my business over at the writing establishment; a gauge showing how the work to date relates to completeness, which updates every day that I get anything written.  It’s about as silly as what I’m doing here, I admit, but it helps to keep me motivated, and since it’s there, you might as well know about it.

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Written
Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Parker 50 Parker 75 Sheaffer Balance Defender	Herbin Lie de Thé Jentle blue-black Herbin Poussière de Lune Waterman vintage blue	27 manuscript pages.