Well, NaNoEdMo is over, and I just about scraped through with my 50 hours done, no thanks to a rotten cold! I have three chapters completed (bar final polishing), and another new one drafted to fill in the new character/subplot. Today I'm going to concentrate on catching up on my 2YN assignments - only a mere 6 to do before we start the world-building section next week!

No, that's not an April Fool's joke - I really do have 6 assignments to do today... (sigh)

Phew! I've finished the character assignments for 2YN already - they weren't as complicated as I'd feared - so I've been looking ahead to the world-building section. I spotted that for the first assignment we have to decide how we're going to organize our notes - one thing I enjoy doing!

One suggestion is to use a PDA, but having lent both my Palm Tungsten T3 (now dead) and LifeDrive to my husband, my only Palm-powered device is the Alphasmart. It may have been ideal for NaNoWriMo, but the screen is a bit dark for other uses and it's hardly pocket-sized, so I've decided to go for a very basic Palm PDA to complement the Alphasmart. It's a Z22 - an inexpensive, no-frills model that should make an ideal electronic jotting pad. I've ordered it from Amazon and it should arrive on Tuesday morning, which gives me a few days to check it's working and install the software I need. I want to get my character notes copied into HanDBase, as well as setting up BrainForest for world-building and outlining. And of course I have to install a Mac OS X theme, because the Z22 looks decidedly Apple-esque :)

My new Palm arrived yesterday, and it really is cute! Small enough to fit into my shoulder bag's phone pocket, and weighs half of nothing. The screen is obviously a bit pixelated, being only 160x160, but it's fine for everyday use - and a darn sight more readable than the Alphasmart!

So far I've installed TealScript (because I can't get used to Graffiti 2), BrainForest and HanDBase for writing notes, and a few puzzle games. Only annoyance so far - despite having turned off system sound in Prefs, it still clicks from time to time.

Last night my revisions to the opening of "Powderkeg Walk" were critiqued by my fellow CWIL members. It seems to be getting better, as there were fewer out-and-out criticisms (apart from George, who still finds my writing style heavy on the description - tough! *lol*). It needs some more tightening, but I'm happier with the way it's going.

Of course now I need to write/edit some new stuff! To that end, I've signed up for the Word Count Marathon on FM. My target is 5k words - just about doable, I reckon.

Despite having signed up for the Word Count Marathon on FM, I've written zilch this weekend :(

Right now I'm blaming it on the New Moon. Although there's a lot of research that disproves the common belief that the moon - especially when full - affects human behaviour, there are a few studies that seem to suggest that depression increases around the new moon, especially for women. Since most studies don't appear to separate their subjects by gender, it's possible that a difference in the sexes could be masking the effect. Food for thought...

My draft query letter finally made it onto the Crap-o-meter website and didn't get shredded (does the dance of joy) :D

OK, so I only got 4 comments, but maybe that's because it wasn't bad enough to spark a bitch-fest. "Too long" was the main criticism, but that can easily be fixed. Overall I'm pretty damned pleased.

Now I just have to get the thing finished...

The programme for the Winchester Writers' Conference came yesterday, so now I have the task of trying to decide which courses and talks to sign up for. Regrettably there are no specialist SF&F agents attending, unlike last year (most of them are of the "strictly no fantasy" variety), but maybe that's a good thing - I'm not ready to query yet, so if someone did show real interest, I'd feel under enormous pressure to get the manuscript finished PDQ.

This week I've been browsing back issues of Vision ezine and trying not to be too impatient to see my first article published. I found some useful articles on writing synopses and outlines by trawling through the index, but whilst doing this I spotted a familiar name - a pseudonym that I was using about five years ago. Coincidence? No. Identity theft? Nope. It was me.

I had written and submitted the article soon after joining Forward Motion, but since it came out only a month before I got married, I suppose I was too distracted to pay much attention. Whilst a great many things happened in 2003 that I would be glad to forget, now I'm wondering how many more good things I've forgotten... *sigh*