(no subject)

Today has been full of things that needed big attention. I don't know if I have achieved anything yet, though. I might know next week, when the answers to all the emails and documents start getting responses.

I do know that I checked 20 books for research and for teaching prep. This sounds so much more impressive than it really is - these are all books I know pretty well. Some of them will be useful to take into class on Tuesday, but I got precisely 5 notes for my novel *and* my dissertation combined from all those books. A lot of work for a very small number of notes. And all those books mean that I've checked precisely 2 shelves of my own library. Not two whacking great bookshelves, but two 4 foot long stretches of book. Two out of fifteen, in fact. Which is why I'm doing the research alongside the teaching preparation: I'm a lazy sod and don't want to check the same books twice.

I'm hoping that my manual of demonology will magically appear as I check books for various things (I need that manual!), but so far all I have discovered is that I need to sort everything before I put it back. I don't know what order I thought I was putting my books in, but it's none that I recognise.

You know when things feel so much under pressure that you either have to give something up or work at triple the pace? Well, my solution to this is to complete things. Even if they're little things, it means less stuff to face and my deadlines don't seem such a bother. Since there's going to be yet another weather change tonight (my neck tells me so, and my neck never lies) I'm going to make a nice big cup of spiced tea and see if I can polish off something cookbookish. If I can get one chapter done every three weeks (and I've already pulled the material together - it's just a matter of...er...writing the thing, and getting the recipes sorted and beautiful), I'll finish the first draft by the due date. Some of the chapters will be a breeze and others will be rather more difficult. I have a rule that I can't work on the cookbook until I've done at least 5 hours on my doctorate and dealt with anything super urgent. Well, both the latter have been achieved today, so it's foodietime!

This reminds me - not many food recipes to test for the banquet next year, but I do want to make a cocktail list. We *need* a cocktail list. There is clear evidence of people drinking cocktails when on Zeppelins. I'm not ready to test yet, but if anyone wants to help, watch this space. I was thinking that November/December would be a good time to test, being the time of year that lends itself ot such things.

(no subject)

I finished my cookbook chapter last night! I chose the easiest, just so that I could say I had done one, but I suddenly feel as if more is achievable. Today I intend to finish with my list of small things that must be done today (scanning of documents, filling in forms, sending bios to places that need bios), do another shelf of reading for the doctorate, process some of my notes for my novel, and then do another ten pages of cookbook. This is the first few days I've had to sit down and catch up with myself and I intend to make the most of it. My aim is that, by Monday night (when my solid time for work suddenly ceases) I shall have got rid of the feeling that it's all too much for me.

It really isn't too much for me, I just did a lot of travel (AussieCon and Sydney) when I still wasn't well enough for it. I'm healing from the travel and just need the feeling of being in charge of my own life again. So it's all good and later maybe I shall be lured into making bad jokes and giving out stray historical tidbits to the reader-magpies out there.

This morning's accomplishment was working out how the Medieval notion of forest and desert fitted into the perceptions of one of my characters and how that differed from how a modern character thinks about the same things. I don't know if I'll use this in the final, but it was very important for me to establish because it's something I knew but hadn't thought of from that direction. Forests and deserts supported different fears and hopes and quite different emotions a lot of the time to the ones I know from my personal experience of the two. I needed to get that clear.

This is a very different type of world-building to my usual. It's slower. It's a wonderful way to discover how I see the past. I'm unpacking and re-examining my learning from the last thirty years. For this experience alone it's worth doing the doctorate. I'm going to emerge a better writer, I think, and also a better historian.

(no subject)

I'm suddenly not quite sure I want cocktail testing for next year's Conflux banquet. Just the thought of it makes me tired. It would be much easier just to have a bar and leave people to their own devices. There's even historical precedent for this...

Does anyone have any strong opinions on the matter?