The Joy of Tech Check-in

Two of the three evenings I have to write this week were eaten up by stupid technical issues setting up my VoIP phone for the DDJ. First, the adapter didn't work, and we spent over an hour confirming that. Next, we got everything up and running for a grand total of 2 minutes (though it took 30 minutes to set everything up), and suddenly the phone just dies and sends some sort of feedback through the workgroup switch that screws up the internet connection on my work computer. Another 30 minutes go by getting that fixed. I've already talked about my Joy of Health issue that ate up the third writing night. Sigh.

I did manage to write a bunch last night and finish up Ghost Story, which is clocking in 9,189 words and earns the title of novelette. I may hang onto this for PBW's 2007 e-book challenge. I may make it a freebie sooner than that. I may try to farm it out for the year until the next e-book challenge. Regardless of its final destination, I'm going to let it sit in the dark recesses of my harddrive for a bit before trying to revise it. Sunday night, I'm aiming to finish my Velorin backstory so I can get back into draft creation next week.

I realized two things about my writing this week. The first is that still haven't figured out how to guestimate how long scenes will take to write. I've been "nearly finished" with Ghost Story for a while now because I underestimated the amount of words the final two scenes would take. After reading through my posts on my other projects, it seems this happens a lot. The second think I realized is that, of the many skills I have yet to acquire in short fiction, I have a tendancy to rely on telling not showing backstory. This is not to say that that's the only skill I have yet to learn in writing short stories, or that I have mastered everything in novel-length fiction. It's just the one skill I'm fully aware I need and haven't yet acquired.

On the homefront, we've been inundated with the various and sundry paperwork piles required for buying property. It's pretty daunting and has tempted my long-dormant acid reflux on a couple of occasions. I guess I was caught unaware by how complicated and, well, frickin' serious the whole process is because it's a transaction that everyone does. I guess I assumed that it would be something along the lines of buying a car. Silly me. But, hey, at least when we initially estimated our numbers, we made errors in our favor and have considerably improved our monthly budget.

So it's been another odd week. But I've known for a while now that "normal" won't be a regular part of my vocabulary until a good month after we move in.