One birthday party down, one to go. I managed some work this afternoon, cranking up some Lucksmiths and eventually graduating to my actual edit playlist as I transitioned from footling with my first chapter to flat out writing an all new chapter 2.

I’m at that stage with the structural edit when the comments from the editor finally sink into the backbrain and instead of ‘yeahhh spose she has a point’ I’m completely at ‘how could I have POSSIBLY thought this was good enough, yeeHAH let’s do some digging at this ditch’ only possibly with a less bad Yankee accent.

Now we’re chilled out, watching yesterday’s Masterchef and waiting for Raeli to get into her pyjamas for bedtime stories. I am going to have to try and work in the evenings now instead of just chatting, watching tv and blogging – but that means convincing a different part of my brain to wake up after 9pm! Brains can be trained. If you have enough carrots (cough, Magnums) and sticks (deadline deadline deadline).

Since I want to kick the part of my brain that can write pretty sentences, I’m feeding it with the best books I can find. No Gossip Girl for me this week – well, no more Gossip Girl. Instead, I’m dipping into Dorothy Parker and immersing myself in Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for a really long time. It’s gorgeous. And yes, it makes me want to lift my game. Damn it. Don’t you hate that?

EDIT: Forgot this – I was chided by Tehani on Twitter for not telling the world that the Guild comic #2 is out as an iApp. I didn’t know until she told me! But now I do and I read it and it is awesome. I am loving the Cyd backstory, and the how-she-met-the-gang encounters, plus actually seeing the visuals of how the game works, the aspect of the Guild that is (understandably) worked around/invisible in the actual episodes. I am sooooo hanging out for the new season to find out what happens between Cyd and you-know-who-and-if-you-don’t-what-are-you-waiting-for-watch-it-already-YES-I-SAID-SHOULD.

And that is all.

The school holidays are at an end, and that means I am officially back to work tomorrow. I’ve had two weeks of chasing my daughters around the house, reading library books and Wonder Woman comics with them, sewing, blogging and promoting my new release.

What I haven’t been doing, apart from a couple of lapses, is writing Book 3. I have been reading parts of the manuscript, and nutting away at titles, but I just know that when I go back to write Book 3, I want to build up crazy momentum and just blaze away until I get to the end.

Unfortunately that won’t be tomorrow, because my structural edit letter arrived in the mean time, and that means three weeks of frantic rewriting before the manuscript is sent to the copy editor. Editing is all about the frantic, for me.

Over at Ripping Ozzie Reads, I’ve blogged the playlist I constructed today which will hopefully help me build up the momentum I need and get the work done in the pieces of the day I can snatch for myself.

Now, with a couple of hours left of the “holiday” and my daughters asleep, I can put my feet up and watch Robin Van Persie v. Nicklas Bendtner on SBS. (possibly other people from Denmark and the Netherlands are playing, but who really cares about them?) Best case scenario, both boys get hat tricks and get carried around on their respective teams’ shoulders. Worst case scenario, RVP accidentally beheads Nicky B while breaking his own legs. Hey, they’re Arsenal, it’s not that unlikely.

That’s right, I am rocking the minimum. Go, minimum!

New music added to writing playlist: the Glee soundtrack. Awesome writing music, I have to say. It’s so peppy. But then I’m the girl who likes to write to Lily Allen turned up Way Loud, so possibly my suggestions won’t work for others.

Writing was harder today because the baby was just a bit squeakier, and being somewhere other than home ceased to be a novelty for her. I have to suck it up and start TAKING THE BOUNCY CHAIR anywhere I intend to write. She does love the bouncy chair. Still, minimum achieved. And the day isn’t over yet…

In other news, I just found out that Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels was the co-winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It’s always awesome when Australian writers get recognised at an international level, but I’m particularly excited because I think this is one of the most interesting and important fantasy novels of the last decade. Tender Morsels has so much depth to it, and so much to say about the nature of fantasy, reality and fairy tales. It’s not an easy book by any means, but it is a true classic of the genre. I’ve never formally reviewed TM because I felt too close to it to appear unbiased (I am in a critiquing group with Margo and critiqued an early version of the manuscript), but I would love to write an academic paper on it some day. There’s plenty of crunch there to work with.