ROW80 Round 5 - 12th Update

I missed the last check-in, but that was because I was busy writing (so I don't think Judgemental Dog will be too hard on me). Unfortunately a lot of it went towards some other random story, but at least a few thousand words went towards my dark fantasy novel. I'm still stuck on the last scene of chapter two; it's almost like I'm afraid to write it because I know it will be crap. Still, I keep plugging away at later chapters, in the (possibly vain) hope that it will somehow prod my brain into punching out the early chapters. I also have one half-chapter or so that I really like, but that I think will probably have to be cut out because of plot/continuity issues. Hopefully I can salvage some of it.

Yesterday I got my revised thesis/journal article back from my supervisor, so now that I've made the last few small changes (delete a sentence here, rephrase a sentence there), it will be good to submit to the journal :D Since uni starts back next Monday and I'll be tutoring two days a week (as well as working four days at my other job), it will be good to have it off my plate.

The review on my Sakura Koi watercolour paints I wrote last week seems to have been getting a lot of hits, so I'm wondering if I should make art reviews a regular thing on my writing blog. It would be a good way to exercise my non-fiction writing muscles (with all my art supplies I'm in no danger of running out of material lol). It will also give me an excuse to buy the new range of water soluble wax pastels Derwent has just brought out :D I should also start doing book reviews again, since I haven't done one since late last year.

I also checked up on my illustrated children's book, Belvedere, and discovered that in the last week I've sold two more copies. I know it's not much, but still... Yay! :)

I haven't had any chocolate or energy drinks in the last week (I know, people who know me are going "WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE REAL BEC?!") since I'm actually trying to be a bit healthier. Plus I figure the less I spend on sugary stuff, the more money I'll have for art supplies and books :D I can pretty much feel my synapses hammering at the inside of my skull, shrieking at me to eat something sweet.

I would shank a mo-fo for some M&Ms right now, is all I'm saying.

No Judgemental Dog photo this week. Instead (because I was really really bored) I decided to make a Judgemental Dog video. Here is His Judgemental Holiness playing with the new toy I got him, a giant novelty tennis ball:


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ROW80 Round 5 - 11th Update

Since my last update, I finally managed to meet one of my ROW80 goals for this round; finishing the first draft of my thesis in journal format. I managed to get it from 70 pages or so to around 18, and I've just got it back from my supervisor. Luckily there were no major changes that needed to be made, so I've spent today just fixing up all the little bits and will soon send it back for another look.

For the rest of this week, I want to squeeze in some writing and some painting, as well as mucking around with my modelling clay. I did a bit of writing last night and a bit more this morning; not much in the way of new stuff, just fidgeting with chapter 1 again, since I want to give the second draft of it to my workshopping group to look at. I've had a few ideas for paintings and created a few sketches, so hopefully my artistic muse will smile upon me this week and let me bring some of them to life in more detail. I had a bit of a play with my art supplies today, attempting a small watercolour painting of a rainbow lorikeet (below) and a pastel drawing (which came out crap because apparently I'm just rubbish at using pastels). Since I was bored, I wrote an art supply review on the paints I used for the lorikeet; you can read it here.


I also fell off the wagon and bought more art supplies -.- But it wasn't my fault, they had a huge sale on making it like a hundred bucks cheaper than if I bought the same stuff in Australia and I couldn't help it :O Still, Rex is on a lower dose of medicine now, and I've worked a bit of overtime lately, so at least I won't have to live on canned soup and noodles since I spent most of my money on art supplies...

Judgemental Dog thinks life should be all work and no play.

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ROW80 Round 5 - 10th Update

Short update this week, since I have to go to work soon and I don't have that much to report. I haven't quite finished my thesis but I should have it done by tonight, or tomorrow morning at the earliest. I just have one more section to finish (it's a pig of a section though) and some formatting to do and then I can email it to my supervisor. After that I'll just have to wait til she sends some feedback, so I can revise it and hopefully send it off to a journal for publication. I want to return to the conference paper I wrote last year as well, so I can try to get that published too, but I'll most likely end up doing some sort of artsy stuff; I got some modelling clay on sale the other day so I want to see what I can do with it.

Healthwise, Judgemental Dog continues to improve; he's a lot more cheerful and bouncy than he's been in a long time, and he seems able to walk normally now, without any pain. He's starting to get a bit hyper though; he needs a good walk, but we're not allowed to take him for a walk for at least another week, just to make sure his paw is completely healed. Since the infection had got into the bone, he's got to stay on the medication for at least another week, but it looks like he'll avoid needing surgery.

Judgemental Dog should have no reason to nip me this week.

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ROW80 Round 5 - 9th Update

Since last check in I've finished editing another section of my thesis (the methodology). Only a small section, but at least it's still another bit that's out of the way. Wednesday and Thursday weren't too bad for productivity, but Friday I had one of those days where I woke up and just knew I wasn't going to do anything useful (so I went shopping instead XD). Then, when I settled in on Saturday for what was meant to be a whole day to myself, my old man decided to clean the house to within an inch of its life (even though it was cleaned on Thursday) and to be as noisy as possible while he was doing it, occasionally nagging me to fix something he'd messed up in the first place. Knowing that even if I got into the writing frame of mind I'd probably be interrupted straight away, it was very difficult to stay focused on what I was doing, and today wasn't much better (it did mean I got to spend some time reading though, which was good).

I am struggling to make myself adapt to writing in a non-quiet environment. Ideally I like to work in silence when writing non-fiction/academic stuff (if I'm writing my novel I like quiet music that suits the scene/genre I'm writing), but I don't think I'm ever going to get that while I'm living at home (and I can't afford to move out yet). It seems that every time I set aside writing time lately, my family decides they have to pester me every five minutes or have their TV cranked up to maximum volume. And yes, I have tried asking them for peace and quiet when I need to work on something, but they insist on disrupting me. They know they're doing it; they just don't care. For now all I can do is try to do my writing late at night and early in the morning and say, "To HELL with a healthy sleeping pattern!" Though now I'm starting to get a cold. In the middle of summer. Poo.

I did get some good news though; the other day my Honours supervisor called me and asked if I wanted to tutor in one of the subjects she was teaching, so I'll be teaching three classes a week for that subject, and hopefully more in some other subjects as well (the official staff line-up won't really be decided til the end of Feb). This will give me something else to fill in my days apart from my normal retail job in the evenings, and it will be a good boost for my bank account. I'm also meeting my supervisor later this week to discus my thesis, so I need to make sure it's done by February 7, so I can email it on Wednesday. If I don't get it done, I will offer my rump to Judgemental Dog for a good, solid nip.

On the Judgemental Dog front; on Thursday evening we got a call from the vet with Rex's blood test results. They said we can decrease his medication from two doses per day to one. Not only will this be good for us (the medicine will last longer so we won't have to pay for it as often, cushioning the cost a bit), but it's already making a difference to Rex; though he's still not eating much, he's a lot happier and more like his old self. Since the weather is so hot, he's not up to doing much anyway, but hopefully once the cooler weather comes he'll start being more active, and working up an appetite to go with it.

Judgemental Dog tries to protect his mistress from the dreaded Desk Goblins, with varying degrees of success...

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ROW80 Round 5 - 8th Update

Since my last update I've got a few more pages culled from my thesis. I think my literature review section is more or less okay as it is (have cut it down from 16 pages to about 5), so next I'll be trying to cut down the methodology, prototype description and results sections (which will involve a lot of fart-arsing around to redo all the screenshots and diagrams). The last week or so has been a bit of a washout as far as productivity goes; between the constant interruptions, stressing about the dog and lack of sleep (yes, those last two are probably related), I've had difficulty focusing on my thesis to really get anything done. Needless to say I haven't made my deadline, which makes me feel bad. I feel like I should have started it earlier - and I probably should, after uni I had a month of not really doing anything since I was burned out from study - but it annoys me a bit that, as soon as I decided to start on it, life kept getting in my way (lesson to self; don't take time off, it will only end badly). I really wanted to have it emailed to my supervisor, but all I can really do is finish it as soon as possible and send it to her when it's done.

Now that I can stress less about the dog (will get to this soon), I should be able to concentrate a bit more, so I'm going to set a new deadline for Monday February 6th. I'm working nearly every day until then, but mostly only short shifts in the evening, so I should still have enough time during the day to make some good progress. I want to get it out of the way so I can get back into writing my novel. And I've applied for more tutoring work this year, so if I do end up getting some, I don't want to have to still be worrying about getting my thesis revised and published.

Anyway, to end the update on a good note: We took Rex to the vet last night, fearing that his limp was caused by a displaced hip and knowing that, if this was the case, we'd probably be forced to put him down (a $2000 operation on top of the $2000 we're already paying for his medication for his other disease would have been beyond us, especially since he's so old and ill that the operation could well kill him). Basically for the last several days, we'd all been mentally preparing ourselves to say goodbye to our faithful old dog. However, XRays showed no structural problems in either his hips or his paws (well, his hips have always been a bit dodgy, but they're no worse now than when he was young).

Instead, on examining his paw, the vet concluded that it's simply an infection in his paw (albeit a fairly serious one), possibly caused by a grass seed or something picked up while he was walking. He has to have some fairly hardcore antibiotics for the next two weeks, and he may need some minor surgery to clean it out if it doesn't come good by itself, but considering how worried we were, it's a pretty good outcome. Dad's been washing his paw with an antiseptic lotion, and already the dog is able to walk almost normally (still with a visible limp, but at least he can put weight on his leg now). We also managed to get him to eat a whole bowl of food (we had to pour chicken gravy all over it, but it's a start), so hopefully his appetite will start to return.

Judgemental Dog is just never satisfied.

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ROW80 Round 5 - 7th Update

Not much of a writing update today, because I'm not in much of a mood. Over the last few days I've done some more revision of my thesis, though not as much as I would have liked (every time I set aside time to work on it, my family decided to pester me). I'm hoping I'll actually get some time to myself; I find it difficult to get into 'work' mode when other people are home since I pretty much know I'll either be constantly interrupted or have to put up with blaring TVs or radios. I'm not sure if I'll get my thesis done by the end of January like I hoped, but I'm still going to try, though it means I'll have to spend the next two days solid doing nothing but revising. *sigh* If there's a god of chocolate and energy drinks, pray to them on my behalf O_o

I still haven't touched my novel, but I did write another random scene for the fantasy/steampunk/Feudal Japan/western mashup my brain came up with a few weeks ago, and even came up with a name for the lead female character. One thing that's odd though is that the story seems to be developing a romance thread, which is not normally my thing; I love explosions and battles and fantastic quests as much as the next girl, but generally all the touchy-feely stuff alternatately bores and nauseates me. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the story turns out when I eventually start working on it seriously.

To be honest, I don't think I'll get much writing done over the next week anyway. Rex is not well. We still don't have his blood test results yet, so we don't know if the medication for his bowel disease is working, but I had to stay up with him for half of Thursday night because he was being sick, and he still isn't eating. When I woke up on Friday morning, he was limping badly, and by Friday afternoon he was no longer able to put any weight on his hind left leg. He can't jump up on Mum and Dad's bed, and he won't run to the front window to bark when the postman comes past; two of his favourite hobbies. He has an appointment with the vet on Tuesday to get his blood test results and to have some XRays. He seems to have pain in both his hip and in his paw, so we're not sure if the two are related or completely separate problems. Either way, it'd be nice if the poor old fella could catch a break.

Judgemental Dog was not amused by the photo Dad took of him and set as their computer desktop background...

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ROW80 Round 5 - 6th Update

Progress on Dark and Silent Waters this week has been fairly minimal. I had my outline and my novel document open, and I intended to work on them, I really did... And then I had yet another Shiny New Idea. Knowing it wouldn't leave me alone until I did something with it, I spent an hour or so typing some random crap about it into a Word document, just so I'd have something to look at later. Earlier in the week I'd somehow conceived of a whole new set of magical rules and structures (no reason, it just happened), and though at the time I didn't have a story for it, I think the Shiny New Idea could probably use it (but I'm not going to do anything with it until my current work in progress is out of the way).

(I could also say I've been distracted by playing Words with Friends, but I choose to believe that it is simply a 'language research exercise')

Also, this morning I woke up and found I'd written myself another random note while half asleep; "make the paint magic" (sure, subconscious, whatever you say...), so even though the story is half-baked at most, it's still doing its best to distract me from my main novel and my thesis and basically all the things I should be doing.

Still, I did manage to open my thesis and cut another few pages, even though it took quite a while because I then had to rewrite bits of it to make sure it still flowed properly. In my original goals post, I stated that I wanted to finish my thesis during this round, but didn't really set a deadline, and I think this may be why it's taking me so long to pull my thumb out and do it; there's no sense of urgency, so most of the time I'm just like, "I'll do it tomorrow... Eh, can't be bothered, I'll do it another day..." and so on. In light of this, I've decided to set a deadline: February 1st. By this date I want to have a complete draft of my revised/reduced thesis in journal article format, ready to submit to my Honours supervisor for feedback. I even made myself a motivational poster:

(Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favourite movies, but that Pale Man thing STILL freaks me the hell out)

I'm working all day tomorrow, which is awesome; since it's a public holiday I'll get paid a metric crapload of money, meaning that next week I won't have to live on canned soup and noodles :D After that I have all Friday and Saturday off so I should be able to get stuck into my thesis properly then.

Judgemental Dog shares my (misplaced) enthusiasm for new story ideas:

~Rex update: He had his blood test on Tuesday night, but we have to wait until late this week or possibly early next week to get the results. Depending on the outcome, he'll either keep getting the same dosage of medication, or we might be told to increase/decrease it. Since last weekend he hasn't had any really 'down' days, so I'm hoping that's a good sign (he spent most of this afternoon repeatedly throwing his squeaky toy at my foot, so at least he's playful). He's still not eating as much food as I'd like him to, but since this medication tends to make him feel off most of the time, I don't think there's much that can be done about it; either way, his lowered appetite doesn't seem to be affecting his mood or energy levels.

He was funny at the vet, though... As soon as she turned around and started pulling her rubber glove on, Rex's eyes widened, his ears went back and he backed himself butt-first into a corner and refused to move. Who says dogs don't have a good memory? :D~

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