I have a thing about notebooks. Whenever I see them in the shops I have to have a look over them. I don't know why - maybe I'm expecting to find one mythical, magical notebook that'll fill with writing and drawings without me having to do any work at all. The thing is, notebooks aren't just the sum of their contents (or lack thereof) - notebooks are amazing combinations of potential, emotion, place, history, community.

These are my current notebooks (I have a drawerful upstairs): ( Notebook Photos )
So there you go. Notebooks. A hope, a promise, a memento, a legacy. (My father-in-law has diaries going back nearly 70 years - his own stack of little notebooks.) They connect me with family and friends, with the inside of my own head, with the past, and they hold promises for the future. They also remind me that even though I cut the grass (yesterday), I still need to hoover the stairs.

( in the wrong house, in the wrong ascendancy... )

The state of my inbox: under sixty-five e-mails!

Today's reading:

• Come at me chapter 4, by closer
• To be a Man chapter 5, by cernicalo
• A Study in Doubles chapter 9, by Jupiter_Ash
• To Shape and Change chapter 30, by Blueowl

Today's things off the list:

Bought a draught excluder to put on the back of the door over the letterbox.
Called Sue.
Started going through the wardrobe and the boxes in the spare room.
Written another 500 words on that short story.
Knitted several more rows of the shawl for my mum.

Oh, does anyone want to come and see Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan in Waiting for Godot in Newcastle next April?

Would anyone like a bread machine? Or a box of candles? Or a 1950s black and white dress with a shawl collar? Or a long (good-quality) leatherette trench coat? (Both size 12) Or a pair of jeans with rhinestone bits on the sides of the legs (from my twin, not my thing, honest)? Or a size 16 silk summer dress with a boned bodice (unworn, from Debenhams)? Or a book on Feng Shui?

Please say yes...

Today I started work on Squirrels In Space again. I intend to finish it by the end of the month. Edited. Done. It should be do-able. I have hope. I wrote a synopsis and analysed character threads. And I wrote another 500 words of Shed World. Not actually Shed World, but the shared world project that the writing group is doing. And I proofread a pile of things for Hub.

I need to do some work for work, yanno...

Also, I went to Asda, put on washing, put out washing, brought in washing, hung up washing, made lamb casserole. Well, stew, since there was too much to put in my casserole dish in the oven, and I have a bigger pan. And stir fry, so there was something to eat tonight.

I call today a win, mostly.

I have a bit of a rash on my ring finger. Allegedly, boiling my rings in a 2/1 vinegar/hydrogen peroxide solution for 15 minutes will kill anything on them. And so I wait for the rash to clear up so that I can wear my beautiful rings again.

This month is my writing month. At points I am going to become extremely anti-social, and possibly even rude and grumpy. So this is my apology before-hand: it's nothing personal. But I have to work, now, and it is going to eat my head, and then (as one of my friends said about extreme babysitting) I will lose all my social. Sorry. I still love you all.

Oh, and I can tell it's back-to-school today. Films this evening? Slither, Gattaca, White Noise 1. A programme on Wahabism. Very end-of-the-world...

Edit: Weight: 153.5 lbs. Exercise: 4 miles on the bike, 5 km on the cross-trainer. Alcohol: 0. I put a mini bottle of red wine in with the lamb, but we haven't eaten that yet. And all the alcohol will long have boiled off anyway.

I made that outfit! Go me! *cough* Ahem!

Random things again:

1. Happy Yorkshire Day to all of us in God's Own County. I know ravenlas says that title rightly belongs to NI, but we know better, eh? *nudge* *wink*

Today, I miss the hills of my home. There's nothing which compares to watching vast shafts of sunlight drift slowly across the tops of the moors from between towering cathedrals of clouds. Treeless, punctuated by narrow valleys where houses huddle together, even at their greenest they are still more shades of brown than there are words to describe. Standing up there, one truly is on top of the world. And the only sounds are the pummelling of the wind and the occasional birdcall. This is my home. This beautiful, bleak place where, in order to see the 'bigger picture', all you have to do is head up, up, up, until you burst onto the tops and the confines of the valleys are gone, blown away. This barren place, where life teems in the hidden spaces and rewards patient searching. This cold, harsh place, where the dark dry stone walls lie like zebra stripes and radiate heat under the summer sun.

The Vale of York is a kinder, gentler place - easier by far to live in - but it lacks the ability to stun the watcher into awe-inspired silence with its terrible beauty.

Still. It could be worse. It could be raining (as it frequently does). It could be on fire (it does that, too).

2. The shiny_hats Summer Ficathon is over. I wrote 5 stories: you can find them over on that community, or you can find them from the links on my the_proofreader account, or you can read them on Fanfiction.net. Or not. Your choice. :)

3. New userpic! Rar!

4. I have the new Richard Morgan to read and review. Woohoo! *is smug* So far? It's getting a good review. A very good review!

5. I have started tidying the house. When it's done, I will get down to writing. At which point I will be grumpy, uncommunicative, largely off LJ (or it eats my head and my time), and I will be off in my own little world. It's like being on drugs, only cheaper.

6. New moodtheme! Courtesy of misery_chick.

7. The remortgage (afaik) completed yesterday. Hurrah!

8. Have a great weekend, y'all. I'll be at a wedding rehearsal this evening, and a wedding tomorrow, so play nice while I'm gone. And if you can't play nice, at least be good enough to post the pictures...

This morning I travelled into work by train, as usual, on a nice, modern train. And I listened to Fort Minor playing on my iPod, through my bluetooth headphones. While doing 16th century blackwork embroidery on a 15th century linen shift. And since getting into work I've posted up part 16 of my 25th century Firefly fanfic (over on the_proofreader).

Sometimes, my life strikes me as improbable.

Also: I am tired. I have left my phone at home, because I no can haz cheezburgler brain. In more dire forgetfulness, my chilli chocolate is also at home, not here with me. I am distressed.

For those of you on my f-list who wish to keep track of their story submissions, here's a good, free online tracker. Also: a Waterstones story competition. Prize: a place on an Arvon Foundation writing course. *wants*

So no, I'm not getting much work done today. In fact, I'd be getting more done if I were simply at home watching tv. Ho hum, never mind.

I can has phone! Yay! So you can reach me on my original number, again. If you want to, that is.

Must remember to stick to tea at Writing Group... Still, word counts are looking more like this, now:

Devil Patches - 2000 (complete); Tie Me To The Mast - 4300 as of this morning; Correspondence Course (FF fanfic, don't ask, will be posted on my other LJ some time soon) 1600; Cypria's Goose - a couple of hundred words more than whatever it was before.

Still to touch with a bargepole - Squirrels, Thunder Moon, Shed World, though not in that order.

Writing on the train is back, back, back, yeah baby yeah! And as a consequence, I am a lot happier. It's odd - I don't even notice that I'm not as happy, when I'm not writing. It's only when I am writing on a daily basis that my mood changes to bouncy. Even with a wee smidge of a hangover! Maybe I'll remember this, next time I stop writing...