Word count: 8503 | Since last entry: 232

I had the day off from work today, and I had so many things to do that I realized the only way I was going to get anything accomplished was to pick some kind of theme. Was it going to be a writing day, or a writing-related activities day with webpage maintenance and critiques, or a day of household chores, or a day of computer stuff?

It turned out to be none of these. It turned out to be a day off.

We went for a walk with some friends. We went to the gym. We did grocery shopping. We did dishes, baked for the Potlatch bake sale, and cooked Broccoli and Tofu with Spicy Peanut Sauce (one of our favorite dishes). I read a lot from the current book club book, Coalescent by Stephen Baxter (and if “pearlescent” means white and shiny, does “coalescent” mean black and shiny?). I don’t do nearly enough reading for pleasure.

Okay, I did do a couple of critiques, and of course I did some writing — I haven’t missed my 100-words-per-day minimum yet this year, and it would be ironic if the first time I did miss it was on a holiday with nothing on the calendar.

(But, to be frank, I’m not happy with the way the story is turning out. This is an idea I cared pretty deeply about, and it’s shaping up to be a lot less emotionally engaging than I’d thought it would be. Someone (maybe it was me) once compared the process of turning an idea into a first draft to taking a beautiful little bird, pulling out each of its feathers one by one, and taping the feathers to a piece of paper, the end result being a vaguely bird-shaped bunch of taped feathers and a dead, featherless bird corpse. This is definitely turning into one of those. At this point I’m going to finish it out of sheer cussedness, then hope that it can be rescued in revision. Not that I think it can ever be the story I’d once thought it could be, but maybe it can be better than it is now.)

Anyway, it was a pretty laid-back day all told, and now I’m going to cap it off by going to bed before midnight for once. Tomorrow’s my birthday, and Kate’s folks will be here; we’re all going out for a nice dinner.