Date: 2008-02-20 11:25 Subject: Winter morning Security: Public Tags: frost, seasons, winter

Last night, we went to bed with the house surrounded by thick fog.

This morning, it had all gone, to be replaced by thick frost coating everything: the trees, the grass, the houses, the ground.

Maya and I took a walk down to the valley where the frost was thickest. Every twig of every tree was coated in centimetre-long crystals of frost, like a thousand fragile white needles. In the warm morning sunlight, the crystals rained down upon us, like a snow shower.

Looking out over the valley and the fields was the most perfectly wintry view I've seen all year.

We had no batteries for the camera, so I can't show you photos, only words.

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Date: 2008-02-20 11:34 Subject: Targets and birthday! Security: Public Tags: birthday, novel, targets

At the beginning of the month, I set myself the target to write 20,000 words on my current novel (the provisionally-entitled 'Dragons of Mars') by my birthday, today.

I'm pleased to announce that I passed that target yesterday, a day early.

Here are the totals, as of right now:

'Dragons of Mars' progress:



February 20th target:



I don't know whether I'll get anymore done today or not. It's my birthday, and we have plans! The good thing is that I'm right at the beginning of an exciting, extended action scene, so it should be fairly easy to get going on it again.

I haven't decided whether to set another target like that, lacking any more birthdays in the next month, but it was incredibly helpful for my writing to have the target. I haven't been this productive for a long time. In many ways, the 20k in 20 days target was more helpful than a 1k a day target, which is what I'd done before, because some days you just have to stop and plot out what happens next, and other days you can do way more, and there's no guilt if you fall behind one day. It's also a manageable target. Even I can keep going for twenty days.

#

I'm having a great birthday so far. Maya and Steph bought me a stonking new iPod to replace the one I left in Florida. This new one has 80GB of storage, which takes all our music with plenty left to spare. I'm thinking of buying some TV shows and using the iPod to store them, seeing it has far more space than my iBook.

They also bought me some gorgeous, luxurious vegan truffles. You'd be proud of me. I haven't started them yet...

Later on, Steph is taking me to Mumtaz, our favourite restaurant, and we'll probably stop by a cafe too.

Right, now I'm off to stroke my iPod some more...

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