ChickenFreak's Obsessions

  I continue to cut the novel. The goal for the first draft was to have a coherent continuous narrative. The goal for the second draft is, primarily, a shorter coherent continuous narrative...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-novel-cutting.html

    So will I resume blogging? Hmmm? I’m realizing that I got that “Hmmm” from the “Mmmm?” that Mary Robinette Kowal uses to indicate the end of a question when she’s talking t...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2023/07/so-will-i-resume-blogging-hmmm-im.html

I used to blog. I kind of enjoyed it. No, I did enjoy it. Now, my writing mostly goes into fiction. Probably a quarter of a million words in the quest to write a 100K word novel. I finally fin...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2023/07/i-used-to-blog.html

  So. The decluttering continues. This post is basically a list. So, bonus cat picture. (No, not taken by me--credit below.) Quite a bit of perfume has been given away. (No, I'm not getting ...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2021/04/decluttering-and-again.html

Hey, look. I'm back. I'm still decluttering. I'm trying to work up some ongoing decluttering momentum, so that every time I look at a cabinet or a drawer or a shelf I think, "What can I get...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2021/03/decluttering-decluttering-again.html

So, it looks like the goal of resuming blogging didn't "take". But let's post again, just because. I'm decluttering. This means that I'm decluttering perfume again. I could have sworn that ...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2021/03/perfume-decluttering-rambling.html

So. Let's write something. A pandemic calls for easy, friendly reading. If that easy, friendly reading caters to one of my prejudices, yay! So. Patricia Wentworth. Patricia Wentworth is a...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2021/01/books-pandemic-reading-patricia.html

Hey. Look. I have a blog. I've been writing. The first draft of the novel is close to done. It's going asymptotic--the closer it gets to done, the slower my progress.  That's partly, I...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2021/01/hey.html

Hey, look! I have a blog! Who knew? I've been working on the novel. It's still in first draft. After...eighteen months since I started? Is that right? But it's getting closer to done--that is,...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2019/02/still-typing.html

Well, that took a while. I'm now about 130,000 words into a 100,000 word novel. And only eighty percent done. There will be cutting, lots of cutting, but that will wait for a later draft. The...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2018/07/blogging-still-alive.html

I'm not dead, nor do I intend to abandon the blog forever. The novel is up to 53,000 words. Actually, the scrap heap also has 87,000 words, but that's not a reliable count; some scenes are repr...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/11/whoah-been-while.html

It's been a while. The novel is up to 25,000 words. Woo! Apparently that's where my writing time is going. Um. I'll be back eventually. Hopefully it won't be seven weeks again. (Woo!)...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/08/rambling-huh.html

Tabac Tabou. Good name. I dug through the subset of samples that live in the Tightly Sealed Metal Canister, and this one had by far the most interesting name. I tried to find something els...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/06/sotd-parfum-dempire-tabac-tabou.html

I may have mentioned that The Farm has 120 four-foot-by-six-foot beds. Prepping and planting a bed--lifting the weed barrier, digging or forking, adding fertilizer, adding compost, possibl...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/06/gardening-more-perennials.html

As usual: Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. So I've actually been writing fiction. A couple of weeks ago, I started a new strategy: the highly flavored strategy. I'm... OK, let's jus...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/06/writing-highly-flavored-fiction.html

Wow. A month since I posted. I've been writing scraps of one of my book ideas. Not all that reliably, but more reliably than usual. The farm is progressing nicely. Much of the following was a...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/05/rambling-farm-rambling.html

(The conversation continued, leading me to observe that I tend to do all-dialogue, or no-dialogue. This one is no-dialogue.) Jane peered into the bakery case as she sipped her coffee. Buttercre...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/04/ittybittyfictionscraps-in-which-people_11.html

So I posted an all-dialogue bit on the writing forum where I hang out, and there was a feeling from some people that occasionally a dialogue tag or even an action or a scrap of setting might be n...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/04/ittybittyfictionscraps-in-which-people.html

(A scrap written in response to the question of, how do you insert description of the narrator a first-person piece?) Oh, dear God. It was Mom. I plastered on a smile and opened the door. Mom...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/04/ittybittyfictionscraps-invasion.html

I'm trying, once again, to write 300 words of fiction a day. I don't know why I'm posting this one. But I am. What the hell? Jane stopped at the end of the alley. What was that? There was mov...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/04/daily-drafts-turnpike.html

OK, so I'm making a battle plan for planting the potatoes. I write up this sort of thing because I can't get at the farm right now and I want to do something! Cut the seed potatoes if they ...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/04/farming-potato-grand-plan.html

(A scrap that I wrote as part of a discussion of that "show, don't tell" thing, in the writing forum where I hang out.) Henry opened the fridge and studied the sticky, empty shelves. Half an ...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/04/ittybittyfictionscraps-mildew.html

I miss posting fiction. The theory was to stop posting and maybe I'd eventually write something that I could, y'know, submit somewhere, because you can't submit it after you've blogged it. B...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/03/fiction-food-safety.html

I'm planning the next garden work session. Gardening time is in very, very short supply this year. The next session will be some weeks from now (long story), and ideally would include: Planting ...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/03/gardening-running-to-keep-up.html

I planted Touchstone golden beets and Oxheart carrots, in the front bed of the currant row. Last time, I planted the carrots ever so carefully--I finely pulverized the soil, pressed a very shallo...

http://chickenfreaksobsessions.blogspot.com/2017/03/farm-diary-seeds.html