How cool is that?

71° this morning at seven a.m., a welcome change from recent conditions, when it was at least 82 first thing in the morning. We’ve had our first 36-hour stretch without a power outage at home, too, which is also great. It’s amazing how antsy you get about doing anything when the electricity isn’t reliable. Do I bring the car inside the garage? We’ve already had to pull the emergency release on the electric door once. Do I start writing on the computer? I get so paranoid about doing frequent saves that it interrupts the flow. Do I start cooking something on the stove only to have to abandon it in mid-cook?

This morning I took a few minutes to organize the stack of papers on the left-hand pullout tray on my desk. That’s where I stack things that will need my attention at some point. (The right-hand tray is stacked with already-read books that I plan to review). Most of what’s on that tray is research material for planned stories/novels and marketing reports. I used to be very organized with my marketing reports, inserting them in a three-hole binder sorted by deadline. However, I didn’t find that level of organization served me any better than the current scheme, which is to print out the market report and add it to the pile.

Every so often I sort through the stack and throw out any where I’ve missed the deadline. I really intended to write a story for the Hellnotes Wee Small Hours contest (deadline today) but with the blackouts and the hurricane threat and everything else, time just slipped by. Besides, none of the three prompts this time spoke to me, no matter how often I printed them out (net count of WSH marketing reports in the stack: 3). Maybe next month.

However, in today’s organizational campaign, I found a report for a market that has a deadline of about two weeks hence and I realized that I have a story in my drawer (anachronistic saying—it’s actually on my computer, but that doesn’t sound as chic) that, with some work, is a perfect match for this market. I have a weekend ahead of me that will afford quite a bit of writing time (assuming the power stays on) so I plan to revisit this tale. I wrote it about five years ago and never sent it anywhere except to my online critique group. It went over well, but the subtle trick I played in the story was apparently a little too subtle at the time. I had written a slipstream story without realizing I’d done so. In fact, at the time I probably had never heard the term slipstream.

Did anyone watch C.S.I. last night and recognize the song they used at the beginning and ending? It’s so damn familiar, but I can’t place it. I think I even have the album that has the original version of the song and it’s driving me nuts trying to remember who it is. Something like “It’s a big world” or perhaps “hard world.” Not an old song, though.