Tomorrow is going to be quite the day! Jared has a ‘hot lunch’ day at school, so I won’t see him for lunch. Then he has a play date at a friends place after school. The only time I’ll see him will be in the early morning, and again for dinner. I think he’ll be tired.

Ryan, on the other hand, I’ll see all day. Our pre school is a co-op, and part of the deal is that a parent must co-teach at least 5 times a year. When Jared was there, Marnie did all the co-teaching. Now that I am at home, that job falls on my shoulders. I have to admit, I’m a bit scared. Me around 19 three and four years olds for about 2 hours. I think I might go and puke now. Yikes.

Writing
So far so good, I did another 1,154 words today. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up to my planned schedule. My main problem is that I am 5 scenes into the novel, which by my estimates should be about 5000 words in. Being somewhere around 3000 words in, makes me think I may have a 60,000 word novel instead of 100,000 word one. If that’s the case, I’ll never be able to sell it. No one buys a 60,000 word novel anymore.

It turned out to be a really nice day here. Weather wise, we had 18C with a cool breeze. Family wise, it wasn’t too bad either. Jared has begin to dislike going to school in the morning. It’s all due to the fact that he wants to be able to play more in the morning. Lunch time isn’t too bad, since he knows that time is tight, but mornings can be a bit tough.

I’ve started doing homework with Jared everyday after school. Another thing he despises. He has to read a book to me, and then we work on his list of 5 words. Last week, he got them all wrong on Monday. By the time the test came, he got 100% right! This week, he got all of the words right, so I expect the same on the Friday test. Even though he got them all right, we still practice his words every day.

According to the teacher, she really doesn’t care how many they get wrong on a Monday. What she is looking for is the amount of improvement between Monday and Friday. Well, since Jared got 100% on Monday, his improvement will be 0. Last week his improvement was 100%. I wonder if I should tell him to throw the Monday words, so his improvement always looks great. (Just kidding, really!)

Writing
Well, 1312 new words today. Not too bad. I am hoping for about 1000 a day. Time limits, including those imposed by the boys, will always cut into my writing time. I just need to work around that. The last 400 or so words are really starting to sound like an infodump, disguised as dialogue. I’ll have to work through that for sure! The meter below shows 1%, but it’s really at 1.67%.  At this rate, I should finish the novel sometime around mid October, 2010 (assuming I started Sept 1st like I wanted to, I’m averaging 87 words per day).

Misc
Crawford Killian has written some stuff on how to write a novel.

Another rushed weekend, and another busy week.  Spent the weekend with the in-laws in Saskatchewan, which included a total of 18 hours of driving.  I think we all had a good time.

Jared starts school tomorrow, and we still need some indoor shoes for him.  So, we are off to Walmart today, along with all the other stuff I need to get done.  We’ll see how Ryan handles not having Jared around all day tomorrow.
Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Reference Classics: China  (Edward L. Shaughnessy General Editor)

Eastern Standard Tribe (Cory Doctorow)

Writing
A good weekend, and all of it pure research for the current WIP.  I did a few weeks of research back in May, but I was really able to supplement it all this weekend.
Misc
How “Lord of The Rings” should have ended.

Here I go through all the effort of converting to WordPress, and then I never use it. Hmmm.

I left home yesterday for a dentist appointment for Jared at 9:30 AM, and we never got home until about 7:30 PM. I’d call that a full day.

After the dentist appointment, I took the boys to Marnie’s work, and we all had lunch (I had the best meatloaf, I’m going back!). After that was a trip to the zoo including a ride on a steam powered train, and then I dropped them off at Grandma and Grandpa’s house while Marnie and I went to Chapters. Bed time was okay, though Ryan had a tough time sleeping.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Gardens of the Moon (Steven Erickson) (link 2)

Writing
Yesterday was a research day. I definately need more background and ‘flavour’ in the outline, so I can put it in the novel. I’ve currently got so many minutae stuck in my head that I don’t know where to start.

Jonathan Sherwood has a good article on sex in fiction here.

Misc
This is a cool picture link

I never noticed, but I’ve now gone past the one month mark on this blog.  True, a couple of weeks of that was while I was on holiday, but I’m still counting it.  It hasn’t yet (and maybe it never will) become a habit.  We’ll have to see.

Raising kids is a tough job.  I knew that before I took over this job, but I keep getting reminded of it everyday.  This week, especially, has been tough.  It seems that when ever the boys are at home, they start to bicker and get into trouble.  I can’t seem to keep them busy enough.  I’m glad this week is over and Marnie will be home for the weekend.  I need a break, before I lose it again.

Yes, again.  I pretty much lost it this afternoon with them.  They both got a smack on the bottom and timeouts.  The timeouts were okay, but the violence and raising my voice at them (for a prolonged period) is definately not okay.  I ask them to work on things with me, but I know it’s really my job to keep my self in check… not theirs.  I’m working on it.

I’ve become a REACTIVE instead of a PROACTIVE parent.  I react, usually badly, to the things that happen in my household, that the boys do.  When I started, I was proactive.  I helped create the situations that stimulated the boys, and guided them a bit more.  I’m hoping it’s the stress of summer.  They say that knowing the problem is half the solution.  I hope so.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Writing
I’ve finished going through the outline, and started integrating my story evolution into the outline.  So far, I’ve identified three new scenes, which will probably end up in a prologue of sorts.  Personally, I don’t like prologues, but it certainly starts the story with a kick, without having to mess up the timeline.

I’m starting to get ansty.  Although I’m reading, editing, and writing the outline, I don’t feel like I’m WRITING.  I feel like I should just get in there and write the damn thing.  I’ve felt this way when I starting speccing a piece of software.  At some point in the design, I’ve always felt like I should just be coding it for chrissakes.  Ahh well….

Jonathan Sherwood is posting about the process he used to write his novel.