Susan Forest

That’ a good accomplishment for a weekend!

I got about 4000 words written, which wasn’t bad considering the new technology I was using. It worked fairly well, too. Mostly, it understood the text I dictated, though I had more trouble with the navigation commands. Still, getting text down was what I really needed, and I was able to do some edits left-handed, afterward, so it all worked out. Still have to learn more!

BTW, congratulations to everyone who was nominated for an Aurora this year. I personally know every nominee for Best Work, Long Form - Leslie, Barb, Ed, Rob and Hayden. Will make voting VERY tough! Also, congratulations to Ivan, who was nominated for short story. Not sure who else was nominated, as the official list isn’t out yet, but already I’m thinking I better book my membership to Keycon!

But the good news is, I sold another story! “The Director’s Cut” will appear in Tesseracts Fourteen this fall! Yay!

The other good news is, I am off to Banff today for a writers’ retreat for 2 days - will be fun, and I hope to teach my computer (and myself) to use Dragonspeak (MacDictate) so I can stop typing with my left hand. Yay!

My crit group will help me with it in a month. This week, I got the Mac version of Dragonspeak (Mac Dictate) and got my system upgraded so I can use it. I will install Mac Dictate next weekend and start training it (and me) how to use it — so when I get my crits back on my novella I can do something with them, and so I can benefit from the writing retreat I’m going to in a couple of weeks.

Despite months of tendonitis, my novella is done! Well, rough draft. But as I promised to submit it to my writers group Tuesday, at least I have something to submit. Yay, me!

Between tendonitis and a strained back, not much done over the last month. Trying to carry on!

Not a lot of word count, but some. Still moving forward!

Didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as I wish I had. Perhaps I’ll do a better job next weekend.
Sigh.

That doesn’t count the revision I did on the first 10,000 words, so not bad, I think. Here are some of them:

She cocked her head. Another sound. Deeper. Not trickling, more like . . .
“Finally, you see the light!” Jerry’s voice came from the other side of her now. He had completed most of the circuit of the room.
“Do you hear that?” The sound came again, low, almost a vibration.
He stilled, his candlelight lapping hers, the murmur of the water, quiet. The faint sounds of the workers in the other room filtered through the door.
More like a moan.
A chink of concrete crumbled from the ceiling and plopped into the water.
“Lian.”
She held up her candle. A long, branched crack crinkled the ceiling. Had that been there before?
The moan came again, and a second chunk fell.
“Lian!” Jerry splashed across the room.

Can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday evening — too dragged out from the week to write, but didn’t want to veg. Erika, Dave, Randy, Val, Kim and I were there as part of a packed house, and it was great fun. Thanks to Pages On Kensington for running stuff like this for authors — we are very lucky to have them (I bought a book, not only to support the authors, but to support Pages as well). The writers only read a little, but told stories about how the work came to be (which was relaxed and hilarious), and then a bunch of us went for drinks and late dinner after — it’s wonderful to network with other authors. Look on my blog roll for a link to Eileen’s website.

Susan