Hints on how A.E. Graves spends her imaginary spare time
I’m using these on my mail now, often in combination with other stamps for my overseas pen friends.
Day of the Dead has long been popular as a cultural celebration here, and it’s nice to see a stamp for this holiday. The USPS shop link is here while the stamp is available.
Historic, record-breaking amounts of it, even.
You've been asking for it, and we're delivering.
— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) October 25, 2021
Rainfall totals (omitting areas that are still seeing rain)
This includes rain ahead of the front as well as some lingering showers.
you can find the big list for the Bay Area here:https://t.co/tWmwafdjIv#CAwx pic.twitter.com/fH70GxxO4U
We also had some wild wind speeds, and are still under a high/dangerous surf warning.
The rain sounded great. It smelled fresh. It made row after row of fast-moving wavelets as it washed down my street. It was emotionally satisfying after yet another year when even drought-tolerant plants have dried up and died, because their very minimal water needs were not met. It was emotionally satisfying to know that this storm will likely put out those ongoing, previously unstoppable wildfires in the northern/central Sierras.
It has been so long!
There’s a good article in the Guardian about this set of storms, describing the all-or-nothing patterns as a sort of climate whiplash, which is yet another sort of extreme created by the ongoing climate crisis.
It felt good to have a REAL rainstorm.
I crossed 28,000 words of the re-write/editing project!
I think it’s going well. I’m excited about some events that take place in the story: it really does build up to a proper climax or two.
During this rewrite, I’m seeing that my chapter breaks aren’t well placed within the story. I’m sure I can do better! I should also examine the number of subsections I have, which mark changes of scene. I don’t know if they should be chapters or not, but I do think it is useful to announce location/place/participant changes.
There is a crisis/subplot that feels really relevant to the main character, but I’m unsure whether it plays out at the right time within the story. I’ll have to examine it again. It may be possible for it to occur at the same time, but be explained and examined by the characters later in the story…
There are some nouns that I’m renaming from the first draft as I write, and I’m trying to rename them consistently throughout the book. (Since the book is being re-entered, I can’t just do some sort of global search and replace yet.) This is the sort of thing that I was diagramming in a mind mapping program earlier this week, but a simple table or set of tables listing characters and the names of things (departments, hallways, offices, whether the cafeteria is called that or if it is a staff lounge, etc.) would also help me maintain continuity. So would an editor, but I’m not there yet!
I’m also doing fun internet searches for things like, ‘how many words can I type without injuring myself,’ because the all-meeting era of work meant that I really was NOT typing all day, every day, and my arms have their doubts about this. I’m still learning the ergonomic keyboard. I am learning to take breaks more regularly, and to use my amazing headphones to have a few lively dance numbers in the kitchen, so my blood circulates, and my body remembers life beyond my office chair.
Summary: I’m enjoying this, I’m glad I’m doing this, I’m gaining some new perspectives on how to improve it. Also, I believe this revision is now a higher priority than writing my fifth (!) novel(la) in November for NaNoWriMo, so I’ll keep at it.
I realize that rain isn’t considered that special, but I’m in a state with wildfires that have been burning for MONTHS, so, it is. SPECIAL. Exciting, even.
Image showing 48 hour precip totals as of 6 pm Thursday: pic.twitter.com/k5qFNwByJs
— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) October 22, 2021
There is more heading our way!
Twitter is mildly amusing at the moment, as many SF Bay Area people are wildly excited over the actuality of water falling from the sky.
The unfamiliar pitter-pat sounds on windows. The smell of petrichor. They are posting absurdly mundane videos celebrating droplets on windshields! Here in California, where fires in the mountains have burned for MONTHS, rain is a big deal.
Water! FROM THE SKY! 😄
A series of weather system will bring periods of light to moderate rainfall 🌧️ to the #BayArea & #CentralCoast through Friday. A more potent atmospheric river then takes aim on the region late in the weekend with widespread rainfall and gusty winds. Stay tuned!⚠️#CAwx #BayAreaWX pic.twitter.com/usmXHUzWfk
— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) October 20, 2021
We’d really like Wildfire Season to END.
It has been an agonizingly dry year. We only got about 30% of our hoped-for water from October of last year through September of this year. We’d really like to do better.
Here’s what the US Drought Monitor for California looks like (brace yourself, it’s bad):
If monthly numerical tables are more of your thing, here is NOAA’s data from our sad water year:
If you know people in the SF Bay Area or California generally, be prepared for their/our delight over a basic weather phenomenon that may be ordinary for you, but which feels like an incredible gift for us.
I’m 20,000+ words into revising my first novel(la), and… it feels like being employed! I am in my home office, at my computer, typing for hours on end, forgetting to stretch, and drinking lots of caffeinated beverages, so that seems about right.
My progress comes in streaks – I’m either in a writing mood (when I do my better work) or just plodding along doing more retyping than editing.
So far, I have about 47 pages of text with normal spacing, one space built in after each paragraph, and a 12 point font. Based on (gu)estimates from my small print first draft, where I’m on page 38 (of 134), I’ve added a light amount of clarifying and descriptive text, but haven’t yet made any big interventions in the story.
It is exciting to have gotten this far. I am aiming for about 80,000 words, so it is encouraging to know I’m about 1/4 of the way through this version of the rewrite. (But also: I’m only about 1/4 of they way through!)
During NaNoWriMo, writing 50,000 words over the month of November comes to writing about 1,667 words each calendar day, and so my 20,000 word progress equates to about 12 days of writing. Excluding days of reading and studying, this is my 5th day of just editing (and retyping), and my first with the new, ergonomic keyboard.
I need a nap. And more coffee. And then, to get back at it!
I always marvel at how lucky I am to live in San Francisco. While taking long walks with friends, I often say aloud that we are extraordinarily lucky to live here, in such a beautiful city, with such a vibrant and creative and international population, mild weather year round, and the remarkable influence of the bay and our famous fog.
October 16th was one of those days that inspires outbursts of gratitude, not only because the weather was warm and mild, but also because I also got to participate with friends in an ART EXPERIENCE! The brilliant Judy Chicago performed one of her Atmospheres installations: a gorgeous, colored smoke performance of vast size, here for the public in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
IT WAS FANTASTIC.
It’s not every day I come home starry-eyed and reeking of gunpowder, but this was one of those days!
The de Young live-streamed the event, and packaged it with a great overview of the exhibit. It’s a GREAT use of video, and I want to compel everyone I know to see it (giving me a moment’s overlap with the sort of zeal religious missionaries possess, which is a funny feeling).
It was gorgeous; it allowed me to follow my habit of photographing other people while they photograph; it was great to see so many people so excited about an art event; it was pleasant to participate in a masked group activity outdoors; my phone is filled with abstract colors and texts from the friend who participated with me; I left completely delighted.
Before I began my big project of rewriting my first novella into a proper novel, I laid out a monochrome photo book of horizontal images I’ve taken of recent architecture downtown.
Blurb is a local self-publishing, art-book-printing powerhouse that I’ve used for more than a dozen projects. I decided to try out their new, continuous-spread books with a subset of this body of work.
The book is printed beautifully – so beautifully, that I sent a copy to another photographer friend, to inspire him to use them as well! 🙂 (He will!). I’m really happy I laid this out and ordered it.
The flaws with the book are with my choice to make it so short: the samples I chose create a photo essay that doesn’t show off the range of architecture I intend to highlight.
I have the images to make it much more comprehensive, but need to re-shoot some reflections (I’m using a rangefinder, and I boggle it with reflections taken through wires of complex surfaces), and be very thoughtful in planning the layouts once I expand it. I’ll likely use Blurb’s regular premium book type (which is sewn/glued like ordinary books), to get a much longer book with a wider range of layouts than I chose this time.
This week, I had an early morning medical appointment, so I caught a commute train downtown. I was worried that it would be crowded.
It was not crowded. Which is a worry of its own.
I was happy to see the commuters who were present wearing what are now known as “soft” clothes (with a new meaning about clothes that are not simply made of soft fabric, but which are also largely unstructured and are made without hard fasteners; this distinguishes them from items that are now called, “hard pants,” for example), but was surprised that there still weren’t a lot of people. That was nice for being able to get a seat on the bus, but still eerie.
It’s still SO DIFFERENT. It still feels so unnaturally quiet here in my City.
One of the interesting elements of great cities is how lively they are: how there are always people out and about, day and night, because so much work (and play) of various sorts are happening. Even though SF has become a relatively sleepy city during my lifetime (which sounds like some veiled complaint about how it is hard to find somewhere good to eat in the middle of the night (ahem), but is more a commentary on how the music venue options have become so limited, as luxury housing displaced industrial and commercial corridors where theaters and concert halls can operate freely), it was very lively by day in the Before Times. It isn’t now. Not on weekdays.
The ripple effects on businesses downtown have been significant: all sorts of businesses, from dry cleaners to lunch-only restaurants to pharmacies to coffee shops have vanished, because the multitudes that had made their business a nearly sure-thing in the past aren’t around. If even national chain retailers have closed up shops, the impact on smaller, one-location businesses and small local chains remains remarkable.
I received goodbye messages from some local food vendors early on, and while restaurants normally fail at a high rate, some of them were big local employers with multiple locations, so it was still a shock. Also, going downtown now, their locations remain vacant. Not all of their signs, fixtures, and furnishings have been removed, likely because their collapse was swift, and there aren’t yet buyers for their gear or lessees for the space. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of how hard major disasters impact everything.
The weekends have more signs of life, as people who are working invisibly from home go out to parks, the waterfront, and shopping districts enjoy the fine autumn weather.
~~*~~
The U.S.’ international travel bans that I wrote of earlier will be lifted for vaccinated travelers in November, and some countries are opening up to Americans again.
While unvaccinated people are still permitted to fly, I am unlikely to board a plane.
It feels like it will still be a long while before I’ll move through the world with the comfort and relative safety I felt during the Before Times.
