Dryer and Research

The dryer stopped heating on Tuesday. The new fuse I ordered arrived Thursday. It didn't fix it. The thermostat kit I ordered Thursday is scheduled to arrive Monday. Since I have Prime, I was hoping for Saturday. Maybe Amazon will surprise me. The fuse and kit together cost $20.02. Compare that to a repairman visit. It's almost like I'm paying myself to fix it. I've been using a clothesline I made to dry big things. Small things I can hang up indoors. It's that or buy some clothespins. I thought about it. I'm kind of torn between wooden and plastic. Wooden clothespins are very traditional, but would they grow mold? Plastic ones wouldn't, but they feel and look so cheap. At some point they would crack like plastic does over time. Wooden ones last forever.

Work continues on the writing front. I had to do some research this week. Normally, research is looking up a fact or reading enough of a subject to be able to write intelligibly about it in passing. It tends to be more of a speed bump than anything, though it does take time when I have to look up enough things. This week was the not fun kind of research that cuts into writing time. Due to not using the right search terms in the beginning, I had to dig to find what I was looking for, and I'm still not finished. I need a 3D star map of the stars around our solar system out to at least 50 light years and possibly up to 100. It's for the book outline I've been working on. I'm not a space engineer, but I want the science to be right. Specifically, I've been looking for earth-type suns that could be suitable places for habitable planets. Red dwarf stars could work if I wanted to do even more research. I don't want the story to be hard SF with stats and math every other page, but it can't be soft SF either. I need some hard SF details.

I've gotten some more writing done this week. It's felt sluggish and rusty and rough around the edges. I'm getting closer to a system that balances my French time with writing time. I'm thinking of making my word count goal at least 10k words per week, which is 40k+ per month. A standard SF/F novel is at least 80k words. A YA book is about 70k words, and a middle grade book ranges from 20k to 55k. My middle grade word count is tentatively 35k. If all went well, I could crank out my middle grade trilogy rough draft in under 3 months. When there's time for that.

Have a great weekend.