The Menagerie

Saturday's catch-up day

At least for NaNoWriMo.  Because I've been working hard on contract projects, I haven't had time to tackle the novel other than minor tweaks here and there. It's hard for me to write this way, because my normal MO involves editing material (typically the previous day's) before I move on to write new stuff.  This going hell-bent-for-leather has been quite a challenge. 

So, I've got 34K words and need to cough up 16,000 by Thursday.  Crazy, but you know? It's totally doable.  Back in the day it wasn't unusual to have 20 page days; I just need to have a couple right in a row. 

My little grammatical soapbox

I realize not everyone is as passionate about punctuation as I am. Sad, yes, but true. (And disclaimer: I'm not perfect, either. Also sad but true.) Recently, I've noticed a disturbing trend in legal writing: putting periods outside of quotation marks: "just like this".

That seriously annoys me. I expect it in the Economist and the London Review of Books, because we all know the English are weird about spelling and punctuation. England is our retarded older sister, and we love her goofy foibles and forgive them.

But it's happening a LOT in legal writing of late. The reply brief I received from opposing in my appellate case was full of punctuation outside of quotes (I highlighted them all in my copy, because I am that sort of person). And just now, I see the same error in a project I've worked on for a local attorney on-and-off for the last few months. I think he even took parts that I wrote and "fixed" my punctuation. Ah!

Maybe someone changed the Chicago Manual of Style when I wasn't looking, but I know for a fact that my newish Oregon Appellate Style Manual doesn't provide for "this". So people, PLEASE! Periods inside the quotes: "just like this."

Whew.

Update

Ugh. Well, having a cold when you can't do more than take Tylenol and boil water on the stove for relief is not a lot of fun. It was very old school, as a matter of fact, and I did the things I'm supposed to do but I never do: drink plenty of fluids and rest, for two.

The good news is that it's mostly over. I only took one nap yesterday, which was progress (Tuesday it was two), and worked a full day (albeit from home). I'm the queen of post-nasal drip, which is unpleasant but better than sneezing all the time. Like I said...ugh.

This is my second week working for the super cool attorney (SCA), and I'm loving it. Imagine someone who makes a ton of money and travels all over the world -- and that someone is getting divorced and their spouse spends a ton of money and travels, too -- and you get to go through all their bank statements and credit card statements and see what they've been spending all that money on. Chrystals are natural-born spies (a post on that sometime) and oh-so-nosy, and I can't imagine anything more fun than rooting around in someone else's financial dirty laundry. There's probably a lot of discovery that's incredibly dull and tedious, but not so much in high-end divorce.

[Oh, and then there's the actual legal part of the work -- the research and writing that I love -- but frankly, going through those bank statements is even cooler than that.]

Tomorrow we're going up to OHSU to see our new perinatologist. One of the humiliations of losing Starbuck (there were a lot) was when I went to see my OB afterwards for a follow-up. The staff had cancelled my appointment, and instead of getting me into a room right away, they decided to make me wait while every.single.pregnant.woman in the waiting room was called before me. They "squeezed me in" somewhere after 5 PM. When I finally got into that room, I didn't just sniffle and cry a bit -- I had a major meltdown, the kind two-year-olds have in the grocery store. Naturally, it was the one time Matthew couldn't make it (I think the situation probably would have played differently otherwise). There was no way I could go back after that.

And selfishly, I'm excited about going to OHSU because part of my NaNo novel is set there. Somehow I've managed to keep up with the word deadlines, despite having too much to do and not enough time to do it in, and I'm on track with over 25,000 words so far.

NaNo Day 13

22,065 words.

And I still feel like crap. Stupid cold.

Down and out

It was inevitable. My husband was sick this week; now I'm sick. I always forget how much I hate being sick; I'm irritable, uncomfortable, and not sick enough to just stay in bed and sleep, so I try to do things, and invariably do them poorly and/or slowly.

Oh, well. There's always NaNo, which doesn't much care about quality. My word count is a little behind the curve at 13,500, but I'm not too worried. The characters are coming together and tension is flowing. It's all good. The funny thing about this NaNo is that the parts of the novel which require more research are being glossed over or ignored for now; I've got plenty of interpersonal strife to keep things hopping as it is. That makes me happy.

NaNo Day 6

I'm plugging away on the novel. Strangely, I didn't feel like doing much writing this weekend, and ended up shopping and napping instead. I'm making up for lost time this evening, though -- I figured out I really needed to be wrapped up with a Pendleton throw with my laptop, and I'm closing on my day end goal of 10,020 words (to be on target).

I set Chapter 2 at the opera. I was going to do that anyway -- it was in the outline -- but going to the opera on Saturday made it easier. I enjoyed watching the crowd Saturday with my writer's eye (most of the time I am oblivious to what is around me, unfortunately) and picking up on details I've missed in the past. Instead of Faust, I had my patrons attending Turandot (the best thing Puccini ever did IMHO).

Speaking of the opera, I really didn't remember that blurb about kids at the opera being on the PO's etiquette page before, did you? Maybe supertitled etiquette primers will be next!

Some little updates

First: I'm enjoying working on my NaNo project. Despite yesterday's sleepy start, I hit my self-imposed quota (2K words) easily. Today I did a lot of real work, and wrote about a hundred. Given I'm giving myself a whole weekend day to write in, I'm not too worried about day's lag. Every time I start writing fiction after a break, I'm amazed at 1) how it can be rough to get started and 2) how well it flows once it does start. Legal writing seems to be exactly the opposite.

Second: I've taken a part-time regular job. It's for this SUPER cool attorney in Portland* who does high-end divorce work. I'll work for him two days a week and handle my other clients and contract jobs on the other days. I'm really happy about this, because as we all know, I love the contract research and writing the most out of everything I do. Also, he appreciates the work I do, and that's wonderful. My professional life to date has been doing highly technical things for people who don't know what I've done. (Sadly, this does cover a lot of my solo practice. I would love to have more sophisticated clients.)

Third: I had dinner with a Eugene attorney tonight and had a great time -- she's up in town for a CLE and we chatted about contract jobs, asshole male lawyers, and John Paul Jones. How could I not love her?

Fourth: a little queasiness this evening. I'm hoping this has more to do with the massive amounts of protein I downed at dinner than morning sickness. Fingers crossed!

Fifth: got the reply brief from opposing in my appellate case. It seemed a little pissy, and so I enjoyed running through it with a highlighter and picking out all the grammatical and punctuation and contextual errors before I read it for legal substance. It was much more fun that way.

*Yes, he knows about this blog. How could you tell? :)

NaNo Day 1

So, today's the big day. All the hardcore novel-writing types were waiting, fingers poised over keys, at midnight. I, however, was not feeling well, and was up and down, up and down, for several hours last night. Fun stuff. It would have been nice to sleep in, but I'd parked Matthew in (we have a long, narrow driveway), and so alas for me -- Norris and I are hanging out in the living room, he (wisely) in front of the fireplace.

I have an amended petition to prep for a client; it's my only drop-dead thing to do today, and somehow I thought to bring the file home with me. I can just as easily do that here than from the office, though I feel a tad guilty doing it. It's funny; when I worked for AT&T, I worked at home more often than I do now! I'm hoping to change that in the future, though.

After that's done, and a nap, I'll move on to chapter 1.

File under "never say never"

I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I've been spending my free time plotting a new novel, anyway -- why not jumpstart myself with external deadlines?

In preparation, I've been typing outlines, handwriting sprawling accounts of characterizations (even running a pen out of ink today). I've even started reading the writing books I've slowly accumulated over the years: the aforementioned Story, Write Away by Elizabeth George, and Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott, among others (books on how murders are committed, how to write mysteries, and various and sundry others). I'm even reading original docs from the Cuban Missile Crisis and excerpts from pathophysiology texts.

It's all in good fun. If I join a writers' group (which I've always considered worse than useless), you'll know I've crossed to the dark side. For now, though, I'm prepping to use my obsessive-honed-in-law-school-compulsiveness to apply to my wacky right-brained plotting and characterizations. Who's to say law school won't make me a better fiction writer?