Paris! Also IWSG Day, 2015 Writing Recap, and ROW80

appy New Year!


Look at this: Harking back to my last post about internships, I've been compiling the tasks necessary to finishing the catalogue of our library. I've discovered that I completed the original catalogue in December 2007. That means I have eight years of book collecting to catalogue! Here's what has to be done:

1. Compile all five Amazon (.fr, .de, .co.uk, .com, and .ca) account orders -- done! Apparently, I've purchased about 300 books in the past 8 years; c.30 books per year!
2. Sort all paper files -- done! I've collated all the Amazon packing slips, all the ones from Chapters Indigo, Sourcebooks, AbeBooks, the Book Depository, and more. Most I don't need, luckily, as I can find them in my email. But I also have a thick wad of scribbled sheets with names of books and authors and "add to catalogue" scrawled on them. I need to scan all of these.
3. Check remaining sites -- I still need to compile all the books I've ordered from Alibris, the Folio Society, Buch.ca, etc.
4. Go through Gmail for all "add to catalogue" items -- done! As far as I can. I'm sure some old emails have slipped past me.
5. Check for any .pdfs in other Gmail accounts and Yahoo account and Dropbox and on the laptop...
6. List all books in Google Play account, on Kindle devices (i.e. not just the app but on the laptop and iPad), in iBooks, Adobe app, Sequential app, and ECodices app.
7. Go through all 10,000 emails in Yahoo and search for "add to catalogue" items, .pdfs, and photos of book fair hauls and gifted books.
8. Consolidate all 10 current LibraryThing accounts into one lifetime paid account.
9. When all is done (!) update the widgets on the blog.
10. Consolidate with Goodreads and start using Goodreads properly!


One thing I have gotten done lately is sorting all the most recent photos -- got lots of photo posts coming up, leading up to the A to Z Challenge in April (I have a theme all ready!). It's nice to have some advance planning for these things, though it's also dangerous -- the moment you feel on top of things is the moment when new tasks and duties start to waylay you.

But, in the spirit of IWSG Day, this can be a good thing, too. It might not just be new plans and duties -- it might also be new ideas, and plot bunnies, and exciting opportunities! It's good not to feel too settled. Like this lovely quote from A. A. Milne:

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"'What's for breakfast?'" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, 'I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?'" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said."

Meanwhile, Round 1 of this year's ROW80 has begun! For this post, I'm recapping the year that was...

In the final round of 2015, I looked back at some of my progress. Before that, these were my original goals for 2015 (the best part of that post is the fact that I compiled the full set of character faces!), with an update in square brackets:


Keep up with blogging [including the A to Z Challenge!] and the Wallace transcriptions, and maybe the Forum (no pressure on the latter): [managing to do this, including writing lots of book reviews! It helps that the Wallace Correspondence Project is currently on hiatus)]

Get going on the Druid's Moon revamp. I can start by printing it again and reading it on the way to and from work [yes, now that my commute is ten minutes longer, I really should do this. I've printed it, but that's as far as I've gotten]

Submit Out of the Water to new agents [I think I tried a couple. But my list of agents to try is growing. It's time to return to this -- never mind editing the sequel and the prequel!]

Find homes for the vignette and short story I haven't submitted anywhere yet [I turned the vignette into a Janet Reid flash fiction piece!]

Finish typing up my NaNo 2013 story, Larksong, in PlainText on the iPad and enter it in Scrivener [almost there! I started typing back in September 2014 -- and at September 2015 still had 1,000 words to go. (If Scrivener ever gets an iPad app, I can use it without the PlainText interval!)]


I also participated in WRiTE Club, wrote and edited an unexpected new short story ("One to Another") and submitted it to Surrey, participated in the October exercise on the Writers' Forum (barely!) and started a new novel during CampNaNoWriMo (The Heathen in the Hold)!
My NaNo 2014 story (the dystopian that turned into a WWI spy story) is pending typing... It hasn't even been given a title yet!
And, among beta reading and book reviews and so on, I added a few hundred more words to a joint novel I'm writing (s l o w l y) with family members (The Horror of Horhor).

I seem to have my finger in a lot of pies.In more IWSG Day goodness, I should remember that just because I don't have an item published is no reason to feel slow -- evidently I seem to work at a steady pace, even when I don't feel as though I'm getting anything done!

It's time to consolidate all my story ideas again. I've got a few plot bunnies and ideas from dreams scattered here and there, including some brief notes for a brand new novel inspired by the life of Henry Blythe King Allpass, who witnessed a friend's suicide, and later was lost on the battlefield in World War I. Perhaps he ended up behind enemy lines...

Meanwhile, here's the first in the series of photo posts! Six months on, here are the photos of our trip with family to Paris:

 

Hopefully next time we can visit inside the Louvre...

 

Those Cathedral bells are rather loud...

 

Top speed of our train -- 300 km/h!

 

There's a cat up on the balconey...

 

A chocolate shop that Jamie and Claire (Outlander) might have visited!

 

This alley off the Seine is called the Rue de Chat Qui Peche -- the Cat Who Fishes.

Wonder why the cat chose this road to fish from the end of?

What are you looking forward to in 2016?