Tomorrow shall be a momentous day, the kind that I will speak of for aeons to come, and holds a significance that transcends the human experience into the infinite. Tomorrow, my internet connection is turned on. Ok, I know what you’re thinking: nothing, because you are an imaginary reader and therefore do not have the capacity to think until I place thoughts within your head, mwahahaha. I mean, what you are thinking is A) that does not sound all that momentous at all and appears more like hyperbole; 2) how the heck are you writing this without internet? Well my dear imaginary reader, you are quite right, and I am being a doofus, but in all seriousness I am on the cusp of running out of mobile data so writing this today at all was a bit hit or miss.
I decided to risk using some of this limited data today to start researching a new topic: desks. I have at the moment got an old IKEA standard single-desk sans drawer – I threw it out because storage wasn’t worth scarred kneecaps. It’s passable as a writing desk, you don’t need fancy – foreshadowing – just a large enough space and a piece sturdy enough not to wobble. Except, two problems: this one does wobble, and now I’m working from home, well I’m typing this at that desk right now. My laptop and an external screen are on the desk, and as you can imagine that halves the size. However, a curve ball: I don’t need writing space on my writing desk. I am typing everything that isn’t my diary or journal.
That said, the desk is, cramped to put it lightly, so I’ve been researching options. The good news is I know exactly what desk I want. The bad news is it costs $9,000 and I will never own it.
Coming back down to Earth – not that the Oval Office is in space – I have a few options. I think short term I’m gonna go for the “can I make this desk I have work” route, but failing that, I’ve found a 110 wide, 60 deep desk with shelves that could hold my PC, and I might put a shelf or a wall mounting up for the monitor. I just got the funds back from selling my old oven and I have a few more to trickle through from some other furniture, but if I can I’d like to put all that cash to one side, as savings, maybe for a new PC. Still on the fence if I even need one.
So on TWO I’ve started a new first draft notation system:
The logic if it’s not clear, is this is my initial take on the ‘quality’ of the chapter. Rather than going back and doing a full read through when I come back to edit this, it will allow me to start on the stuff I know doesn’t work and move back. ‘S’ is strong, ‘M’ is middling, ‘M/w’ is middling going on weak and of course, ‘W’ is weak. You might notice, despite me saying of late ‘my writing seems to be coming out better in the first draft‘ that I only have one ‘S’, and the last two chapters were arguably the two weakest, despite me writing them as I was making such claims. Well, quality of prose wise, I think they’re clean. Story wise, well let’s just say if I were to cut both down from their 5,000+ words to a single 2K chapter I wouldn’t be sad to see them go.
Even so, I do feel I’m starting to get the feel of this book a little more, and it’s because I do that I can see these don’t add a lot. They have important plot details, but I believe no plot is ever ‘important’ enough to justify a shoddy chapter. Funny story, I made a typo adding the quotes to that, and accidentally wrote ‘limportant’, which I hereby coin as meaning ‘something that while a necessary part of the whole, reduces its quality in its current form’. And yes I Googled it and yes, ‘l’important’ is french but I’m calling this different enough to count. Also no one reads this so who cares? When I do the rewrite, I will separate the important from the limportant, and cut accordingly. For now though, time to march ahead.
I really hope I’m not limportant…
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