TGIF!

So it's Friday, end of the week (nearly). What have I accomplished this week? I'm glad you asked.

1. I finished editing Chapter Seven of The Whale and the Tree. I should be working on Eight right now, but I'm procrastinating to write this blog instead (also, I'm slightly stuck).
2. I read through most of The Rose Queen and discovered to my chagrin that the MC cries on nearly Every Single Page; Jenny has kindly brought this to my attention (thanks). The embarrassing thing is that 90% of these ridiculously frequent saltwater escapades could be completely nixed without affecting the story one whit. Oops.
3. I've subscribed to Writer's Digest. They sent me this ridiculously good deal through the mail so I signed up and am now awaiting my first issue... which probably won't come until sometime in September. But that's all right. I've plenty of editing to occupy me in the meantime.
4. Imrahil got tuned this morning. He now sounds absolutely perfect. :-)
   

I think that about hits all the highlights. Excessively exciting, I know. Reading is going pretty slow--I generally don't do very well reading several things at once and usually end up reading them one at a time. Not quite halfway into Princess Academy, which I'm liking pretty well, though Goose Girl was a bit more up my alley. I'll give you the final review when I'm done, of course.

I'd like to take this moment to talk about Scrivener. As a lot of you know, Pippin, my faithful (mostly) Dell laptop gave up the ghost in January, and I adopted my adorable MacBook, Sam, to take his place. Sam proved his worth by sticking with me throughout the latter 100k of The Fire in the Glass (it's rather disconcerting to switch computers in the middle of a first draft!!), and I'm quite excited to be noveling with him in November. I am, however, thoroughly sick of Word. It's all right for the PC, but for one reason or another completely sucks on Mac, and there's just a lot of things it simply can't do. I've been using the Mac-only program Scrivener for the rewrite of Whale and the Tree and absolutely adore it. I will be purchasing this when the 30-day trial runs out! I love the note cards feature; it's been excessively helpful with all the scene rearranging I needed to do, and lets you see your whole story at a glance. I also adore the full screen mode. I'm really excited about using Scrivener for NaNoWriMo this year--I thoroughly expect it to be just as amazing during the outlining and first draft stages as it is with editing.

Okay, that's about as techy-nerdy as this blog will ever get, and I'm done now. I'll just close by bemoaning the fact that I don't live in England.

Till next time!

Gamwyn