Monthly Archives: February 2012

February 4, 2012 · 9:22 pm

A busy day and horsey picspam

I ended up getting a lot of stuff done today…well, really, it was both me and DH.

Started out with taking the ORELA Multiple Subjects III test…sure was glad I signed up for one test at a time as I took my time getting through it and I didn’t feel the pressure of those taking both tests.  An interesting experience, especially since I used a lot of the strategies I tell my students to use during high-stakes testing.

Ahem.  They work.  ‘Nuff said.

Then met a friend to pick up the ski bag left at school, then joined DH to go up the Mountain and deal with rental stuff.  Physical labor, just enough to get a good workout.  We did some shopping in Sandy, then went to the barn where I put horsey through her paces.

G thinks it’s too warm for the horses to wear their winter blankets and I forgot Mocha’s spring sheet.  That was okay as she had plenty of loft in her hair coat and our work today wasn’t enough to get her sweaty.  For one thing, my back is sore and we’re skiing tomorrow.  For another, she’s still getting her back muscles in shape after the intermittent riding of the past six weeks.  Got to build her topline back up.

But hey, DH got some good pictures, including some incredible rollback shots.

Here, she’s coming into the stop.

 

 

 

 

 

And here, she’s rolled back and is heading the other direction.  These were done early on, because she was the Queen of Sluggery, and I wanted to wake her up a little.

 

 

 

So, okay, that worked.  I got some nice trot work out of her (perfect for my back as posting trot actually helps with the strained ligament).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually we did some good lateral work, I got to the bottom of the tightness she’d been showing, and we had some nice, relaxed loose-rein riding with the head down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that we went outside.  Mocha had a nice little amble until we reached the corner of the far tree field, where some workers were planting a new set of trees.  She had to Get Looky about it, but in true alpha mare fashion, she moved toward the Scary Thing to get a good look at it.  Too bad DH didn’t get any pictures of that because I think they would have been good.

Anyway, she looked good and hard, got the situation resolved in her own mind, so we headed back.  Spent some time walking over a big fallen tree limb to expose her to natural obstacles, then groomed her and put her up.  Did some more shopping on the way home.

A very nice springy winter day in Western Oregon.  Lots of bright, clear light.  However, we’ve been here before.  Things can change very quickly……

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· 7:15 am

Ski Day #8–Bluebird Mile Day!

Yes.  FINALLY.  I think this is one of the latest dates I’ve had for getting up on the Magic Mile in a ski season.  Between health/back/weather, it’s taken until now to get up there…but oh yes, it was worth it.

Yesterday was a spring skiing type of day.  Temperature inversion so that the higher up I went, the warmer it got, even with a stiff east wind.  However, this time the western valleys were clear:

(okay, a bit hazy.  But still, no fog).

The eastern valleys, though?

I swear, I didn’t know that Central Oregon got this much fog until I started skiing.

Started out my day skiing in the trees.  Icy at first, and I wondered if I’d overwaxed my skis and hadn’t removed enough of it in the scraping and buffing process.  Then I decided, once things didn’t change after a run (even on the iciest days, if it’s the wax one run will change things), that maybe it was the conditions and just stopped worrying about it, continuing to ski conservatively.  It was pretty enough down in the trees:

and there was no wind to speak of.  But early in the morning it was slick and icy, and I kept looking up at this:

and wanting to be up on the open slopes in the sunshine.  Finally I told myself “One test run,” and went up.

And oh, it was so worth it.  The surface wasn’t the greatest in the world.  It was icy mashed potato lumps.  Not much snow over the wind-scoured ice, certainly not enough yet to settle in between the iced snowdrifts that I discovered in lower snow last year, but still eminently skiable.  And it was the Mile.  Up on top of Oregon, higher than most other points around, lots of gorgeous scenery AND NO ONE ELSE UP THERE!  Only a handful of us were riding the Mile.  Of course, given the lack of trees and the wide openness of the run, it’s possible to have a lot of wide open space on the Mile once there’s enough snow.

There was wind.  I got chilled but not cold.  The new ski jacket passed the windy Mile day test because while I got chilled on the ten minute ride up, I didn’t get cold.  The jacket fits snugly and keeps me warm.  The wind kept a lot of people off the Mile but hey, I’ve experienced worse.  It was strong enough to buffet me around when I had my back to it, even skiing downhill and not across the slope (there’s been more than a few times since I’ve lost weight that I’ve gotten off the chair, turned left, and had to dig my edges in to keep from skating across the flat when the wind caught me).  But it was not bad.

Of course, after that one December day last season, where I shivered up the lift, got off at the top, looked at the solid sheet of wind-carved ice in front of me and realized This Is A Bad Idea, my standards have changed somewhat.

So it was a gorgeous ski day.  I got four runs in on the Mile, a Kruser run and a Jojami run.  My back and hip started talking to me after the sixth run and the clock was running out, so I skied back to the lodge, changed out of my gear, and went to work.  Had an extremely pleasant First Friday with friends after work, then came home.  Sweetness.

And now, off to the ORELA.  Bleh.  But probably skiing tomorrow, and horse this afternoon (once we get sandbags made up for the renter to have in case of flooding later on this season).  Going to be a busy weekend.

No rest for the wicked.  But that’s the way it is.

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February 2, 2012 · 7:21 am

On the writing process

Not a long post today, but I’ve been thinking about changes in my writing process as I go about getting ready to work on Netwalk’s Children.  For one thing, this indie publishing thing?  Means I have NO EXCUSES about delaying getting to the work.  Doesn’t write itself, doesn’t put itself up, can’t mutter about editors taking a long time to hold up the work while they decide whether it fits their line/publication.  I’ve gotta write it and send it to my copyeditor.  Then it gets rewritten and sent to my formatter.  And somewhere in there I’ve got to think abut stuff like, oh, covers and publicity and all that good pile o’stuff that is part of the whole process.

Lots of work.  But, on the other hand, one really cool thing?  I can jump directly from revisions on Netwalker Uprising to planning Netwalk’s Children.  I CAN HAZ KEWL WORLDBUILDING WHILE WORKING ON CONTINUITY!!!

Yeah.  Got a little excited there.

I’m also getting a bit excited about Children.  It’s been a while since I’ve done new drafting/planning for a novel.  In fact, it’s been two years since I’ve done new novel work (shudder, why so long?  Inventory and all that good stuff.  One reason The Netwalk Sequence came about was the opportunity to get niche material out of inventory, experiment with consciously putting together a whole sequence of related stories/novels, and get that whole world out for people to find and enjoy).

To that end, I’m finding myself spending more time outlining and preplanning than I have in the past.  In the past, I’ve been a pantser about long form writing.  I knew kind of where the story would end up, knew the main points of a two-page outline, but the details?  Nuh-uh.

Not so with Children.  One reason for that is a hard self-imposed deadline–I want it ready to go up in late April or early May.  That means that when I do start writing, I need to be able to start writing.  Hard and fast.  It’s something I know I can do, but I’m realizing that to keep the pieces together without having to do tons of rewriting for continuity’s sake/fixing plot holes/etc, I need to have a more detailed writing plan than I’ve done for past books.

Additionally, Children is the first Netwalk story to be written since I started studying Interpersonal Neurobiology.  It’s the first significantly neuroscientifically informed Netwalk story, which means I need to identify where I go out and do more research.  Plus, I want to try doing this sort of detailed outline to see how it affects my actual writing process.  Ideally, I’d like to get it up on Scrivener and use that tool to help me put things together.  I need to integrate more technology tools in my writing work simply because otherwise I’m drowning in paper, and I need to simplify everything so I’m not lugging around a ton of reference materials.

However…the initial outline is going on paper.  Annoying, but given the time constraints of the Day Jobbe, that part of the process has to happen this way because of learning curves and all that.  After Children, perhaps even with Netwalk’s Descendants, I’ll be putting together stuff on Scrivener or some other like tool that I can find to port hopefully across to my tablet as well as laptop and desktop.  I’m starting to integrate materials for my nonfiction writing in that manner; it would be awfully damned nice if I could do the same for fiction.

I’m still not sure what the next project will be once I finish the Netwalk Sequence.  I have three short stories outlined, plus ongoing nonfiction projects.  I have portions of half-finished novels lying around the hard drive.  I also have the Peter McLoughlin Weird West sequence that is crying out to be written.

We shall see what the summer brings.

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February 1, 2012 · 8:31 pm

Catching up with things, getting back to Mocha work

Sheesh.  One busy week and a girl gets left behind on the blogging front.  Not that I haven’t been busy or anything…just running a lot of errands.  And going to SFWA readings.  And all sorts of other stuff.  Including working on a detailed outline for the Netwalk’s Children novella.  Children will be the most recent of all the work I’ve put up (well, except for Netwalk’s Descendants and I haven’t got that story in place yet).  With this novella I’m moving past things that are three to six years old and am really breaking new ground with this series.  I’m excited.  Hopefully others will get excited about it, too.  Given where it comes in the publishing schedule, I should have enough backlog already up that I can get aggressively behind promoting it.  It might not be ready for Norwescon, may be ready for Miscon promotion (still debating about going to Norwescon but thinking I may need to do it).

Mocha’s now settled back into the regular working schedule.  Monday afternoon she was still just a wee bit edgy and not quite back into her working head space.  We needed to Have Discussions right off the bat when I was stretching her forelegs.

Me: Give me the right foot, please (actual, me placing myself next to right foreleg, clucking).

Mocha: How about this one instead (actual, picking up left foot)?

Me:  No.  This foot.

Mocha:  I really would much rather pick up this foot.  It’s–ew–full of dirt and I don’t want to stand on it.

Me: This foot.

Mocha: Pick this foot out first, please?  I’d much rather do this foot.

Me: Look, Princess, it’s not going to hurt you to stand on that foot.  Hundreds of thousands of poor, deprived horses do this ALL THE TIME.  WITHOUT A FUSS.  THIS FOOT.  NOW.

Mocha: Le sigh. (picks up right foot).

Besides that little bit of entertaining nonverbal exchanges wherein the Princess was being The Princess (how can I stand unbalanced on a dirty foot!!), she was off in her balance and I was off in my back, dang near shot out of the stirrup in pain when I mounted.  However, throughout the course of the ride I figured out how to ease the pain and ended up feeling pretty good at the end.

So tonight, she was all working horse.  No-nonsense, back to her usual self.  She did appear to have herding on the mind, tracked one of the dogs who didn’t move out of her way at a trot until the very last moment, and then a crabby young horse in schooling on the lunge brought out Irritated Cowhorse Mare Ready to Herd Bad Behaving Kid.  Lots of energy, definitely wanted to finish out the ride with galloping thunder around the arena, head low and relaxed on the long rein.  Mellow flying changes–I hadn’t planned to do them, but she was moving smoothly so we tried them, and she executed them in flawless, relaxed mode.  Yay.

I wuv my horsie.

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