Late
It is unduly late.* Well, I slept nearly ten hours last night. That Grandsire Triples will really take it out of you.** And so everything has been late today, including slamming on with SHADOWS till about six minutes ago.*** ARRRRRGH.†
And there were handbells. Hellhounds and I had only barely got down to the mews when we had to slap ourselves back into our coats again†† and crunch back to the cottage.††† We’re still beating bob major to death but . . . we’re beating it to death more briskly. Gemma missed ringing at the abbey last night but she was full of back-patting encouragement and positive remarks today‡ as I went blither-blither-blither rounds-on-ninety-three‡‡ leopards-in-the-shadows.
CathyR
Oh gosh, I know that feeling exactly (Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, huge industrial ringing chamber, 12 bells, heavy – and having to stand on a doughnut-like 3ft raised platform to ring!!!). Total nervous breakdown, looking into the abyss.
I would not have done it. I would have taken one look into the abyss, and turned around and fled. I think I’ve told you about ringing at Chichester Cathedral? It has a separate tower . . . which is the size of Arundel Castle ‡‡‡ I swear. The ringing chamber is nearly the size of Forza’s and it’s long draft§ and . . . the whole experience still makes me wake up in a cold sweat swearing that I’m going to forget bells and take up knitting.§§
. . . It’s the heaviest and highest peal of bells hung for change ringing in the world. . . .
Mind you, it’s skill not brute strength (although it does usually take two people to ring the tenor up). I’ve seen a fairly slight teenage girl ring that tenor.
I watched them ringing up the tenor at the abbey last night—they started off with three. Once they got it going the third person dropped out (panting). They do have one madman who likes to ring it up by himself when he’s there and in the mood, but I don’t think I’ve met him yet.§§§ And yes . . . these little wisps of people who ring colossal bells are a little daunting to those of us . . . who would be happy to be able to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples on ordinary bells reliably.
We’ve probably a second visit there in a couple of months. Hopefully I’ll do better. I’ll think of Robin to give me strength!
THE LAST THING YOU WANT TO THINK ABOUT TO GIVE YOU STRENGTH IS ME.
We will, however expect a full report. . . .
* * *
It’s still snowing.
* * *
* It’s also SNOWING. And I left my yaktrax at the cottage.^
Julia
I had [to walk to school in the snow] this week. . . . I’m currently in France (working as an English teacher in a primary school), and it snowed over the weekend. The French aren’t used to dealing with snow… and so the buses weren’t running. In order to get to work on Monday, I had to walk. Through the snow. Uphill.^^ It took an hour. I only fell down once, so I felt quite successful when I finally arrived!
I would like to eschew the standard falling-down part. I did manage to fall down on Chaos yesterday or the day before, but that was one of those everybody-in-slow-motion-AM-I-REALLY-FALLING-DOWN-RATS-YES moments and I was lifting Darkness off his feet with my death-grip on his (short) lead with the other hand as counterweight, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. I’m not entirely sure Chaos noticed. He may have just thought it was a sort of upside-down lying-on-the-sofa-but-outdoors thing.
But the ‘not used to dealing with snow’. Yes. I leave Wolfgang wherever he’s parked after the third snowflake falls not because he’s hopeless in the snow, which he isn’t, but because most of the locals are hopeless in snow. One of my least-favourite fantasies is a side-on SUV coming at you at frictionless speed.
^ You don’t want to know. Living in two (or three) houses has serious drawbacks especially if you’re perhaps a trifle disorganised in the first place. See, my yaktrax mostly live in my canvas briefcase equivalent when the weather gets hinky, but occasionally they are transferred to some other mobile living unit. I took them with me to the abbey last night because while the main roads are all clear, the footpath from the abbey car park to the enchanted portal is a mixture of 14th-century cobblestones and 16th-century paving, a trifle unevenly worn, and mostly in shade all day. I thought it might be yaktrax or hands and knees last night, and I preferred yaktrax. As it happened, extreme measures were not required, and then when I got home again my knitting came back out of the small evening knapsack and went back into the large day knapsack+ but the yaktrax, somehow, did not.
There. You didn’t want to know, did you?
+ Which frankly wouldn’t fit up the last flight of flower-fairy stairs at the abbey anyway.
^^ Both ways!
** Grandsire Triples, hell, it was the rounds on eighty-four. Or was it eighty-seven?
*** I talked to Hannah today, who is approximately the only person besides agent, editor and husband who gets a look at a book before it’s done, and she said that she thought I got the emotional reality of a teenage girl (ie in the particular opening set-up of this story) down really well. I was pleased, of course, but after we rang off I was thinking . . . is it a good thing to be able to write a persuasive modern, if alternative-world, seventeen-year-old—who goes to high school and lives with her parent(s)—when you’re sixty?^ Don’t answer that. Besides, I need to earn a living, and I’d be really bad at robbing banks.
^ Okay, I know I’m not the only elderly kiddie/YA writer around. But it hits me harder when it’s FIRST PERSON AND SHE’S GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL. Good grief. High fantasy seventeen-year-olds are different.
† I also talked to Merrilee today who said, you, that is, I, do need to remember that I may not make the deadline and SHADOWS may not come out in the spring of ’13. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Yes. True. I know. One of these years my hurtle toward the last possible scheduling moment is going to fail. Merrilee was giving me the standard agent lecture about not hurrying but taking the time the story needs and I said, MERRILEE. HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN WORKING TOGETHER? I can only write as fast as the story will let me. If the third draft takes longer than I’m hoping^ then . . . it does.
So this is your warning too.
^ The good sign is that her list of notes matches mine. There were no, What do you mean, you were not convinced by the history teacher who turns into a manticore and eats the students that piss her off? Have you forgotten what high school is like?+
+ Merrilee is nearly as old as I am.
†† OOOOOWWWWWWOOOOOOO, say the hellhounds.
††† It was afterward, Colin, leaving, who said, in sepulchral tones, It’s snowing.
‡ She’s a GP and has three kids. She absolutely knows how to be supportive and encouraging.
‡‡ Yes. They breed.
‡‡‡ http://www.arundelcastle.org/_pages/03_visitor_info.htm
§ Which means the ceiling is very, very, very far away, and the rope is a million feet long. In the first place that much rope tends to flap around unless you have FLAWLESS handling skills—do I need to tell you I do not have flawless handling skills?—and in the second place . . . the weight of the rope has an effect on how a bell rings, depending on how heavy the bell is and how much rope there is. This can be DISCONCERTING—and on long draft, probably is.
§§ I’ve been having this nightmare for years. When you wake up out of an old familiar nightmare you may not remember acquisition of recent skills that may have a bearing on your equally old and familiar escape mantra.
§§§ I want to know how he gets ringing-up-the-tenor-by-himself shoulders up that last flight of stairs.
Editors and editing, a demented view
I’ve just run myself into the ground on SHADOWS, it’s after one o’clock in the morning and I haven’t started the BLOG yet. What a good thing I’m not getting up early tomorrow to ring bells. . . . *
Piankatank
I’m curious about the three drafts in a row. Knowing that the second draft was just delivered and immediately starting on the third, where does the editor come in? I sort of assumed that the second draft went to the editor to review and then once there is input from the editor you worked the next draft.
Good question. In an ideal world, yes, you turn in your manuscript more or less at whatever stage you want some editorial input** and then you wait till you’ve had your input and you consider it before you embark on your next draft. That’s in an ideal world. And some writers do work like this—indeed some want input from friends, colleagues, their agent, their editor, almost from the first sentence***, some want it when they feel stuck, some want it at a given stage—like at the end of a second draft—whatever. Whatever works.
Me, I don’t want it at all. Ahem. This is a character flaw. It’s all very arteeeeeeestic and romantic that I Can Only Listen to The Story, but it’s also a great big fat failure because I’m still only mortal and it would be a good thing if I could use more of what other (intelligent) people tell me. But mostly what other people tell me—even when they’re right—comes over as static on the line. SHUT UP, WILL YOU, I’M TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE STORY.
In my ideal world I don’t turn my manuscript in till I’ve done as much on it as I can, or anyway nearly. Even I recognise the need for someone else’s view of a story which I, by this point in the writing process, know too well or anyway from too close a distance. I need someone who doesn’t know the story as well as I do (including all the parts I decided to leave out, like the revolving door and the doorperson’s uniform) to tell me what I need to put back in. Or that the intensity of scene A needs to be balanced a little better by some relief of tension in scene B. BEAUTY’s editor asked me to shorten the beginning so that Beauty arrived at the Beast’s castle sooner. SWORD’s editor wanted a little more about Harry feeling dislocated or disoriented or homesick—she took to her new life a little too well. And so on.
Mostly I’m not edited that much. I am very lucky that—mostly—what I turn in as finished copy is acceptable. If I had to make huge changes to satisfy my publisher and get me paid . . . I probably wouldn’t be a professional writer.
The last few books I’ve had to hustle for one reason or another—mostly to do with scheduling and money. This puts a strain on my editor as well—is she going to have a book for this or that list or isn’t she?—and the compromise we’ve perhaps almost inadvertently reached (although Merrilee might whap me up longside the head for that remark) is that I turn in, for example, a second draft, so that she can judge if I’m far enough along to finish when I say I’m going to finish—and she can then hold a place in the schedule for it.† I may be a good writer who can (mostly) get away with a light editorial hand . . . but my sense of time sucks pond scum. And even if she does say ‘yes, you’re on’ (and please the gods she will about SHADOWS) she’ll send me some notes . . . which I probably won’t do more than glance at at till I finish the third draft. I listen to the story, you know? And then I’ll check that I’ve already fixed everything on her list—or not. If she’s found something I’ve missed—and she found stuff in both CHALICE and PEGASUS in recent memory—I’ll go back and tinker. I’ll be going back and tinkering anyway. But by the end of the third draft the story is stable. I can afford to listen to other people about it.†† It’s also busy hardening into its final shape—see: can’t make huge changes—but I can still tweak and smarten.†††
Mostly. Usually. I hope . . .
* * *
* This is actually dangerous. Heretofore having to get up at a (comparatively) respectable hour once a week has kept clawing me back toward some brief, glancing relationship to normal life. One seventh of my mornings looked rather like other people’s mornings. Now . . . I may split off from John Donne’s mainland and float away forever.^
^ After all, he was specifically only talking about men.
** Of course you don’t abuse the privilege. Any editor (and any agent) has lots of other authors they also have to respond to and work with, and we’re all big boys and girls and self-motivated and sensible.^
^ Hahahahahahahahahahaha
*** But see previous footnote
† Remember publishing is a business. And the widgets it sells are books. It needs x number of new widgets per season to produce its hoped-for sales figures.^
^ Of course books are not widgets and publishing is insane . . .
†† I can’t really explain this. Static on the line is as good a metaphor as any. Or it’s like walking a narrow path in a high wind and somebody comes running up behind you and gives you a shove. I know it’s not supposed to be like this. Intelligent thoughtful reader response should be helpful and welcome. Um. Well. —This is also related to my extreme aversion to reading reviews. I’ve talked about this before: very few critics are writing from a perspective that has any relationship to mine or is of any use to me in (for example) explaining why something doesn’t work and why I shouldn’t do it that way again. The good reviews tend to be pleasing but alien (I did? The story what? Oh) and the bad ones just make me want to tear my entrails out. (The bad ones that are factually incorrect make me want to tear the reviewer’s entrails out.)
Although a good review that also gets it pretty well makes my YEAR. And it does happen. Mmmmmm.
††† And given the time pressure, if she does decide we can cram SHADOWS through for spring ’13, I may receive final editorial notes on the third draft more or less simultaneously with the copyeditor’s queries. ARRRGH. This creates a brief, hair-raising, high tea-and-champagne-consumption period which includes bloodshot eyeballs, shaking hands and insomnia.
A Few Pages After the First
No. Not quite. Nearly. Tomorrow. I know I said that yesterday. Well, I’m more caught up than I was yesterday. It still seems to me going well. I can risk saying that (I hope) because I know there will be days between now and the rmmph of March when it is not going well, when I am not a writer, I never was a writer, and I’m starting my retraining as a mechanic* in the next uptake.** Which is to say I know I’m going to be paying for good days whether or not I admit to having them so why not admit it? See: wrestling alligators, below.
Stardancer
I learned how hard it is to make a story. . . . I did learn to take something in the range of horrible/okay and shove it around into okay/pretty okay, even if I didn’t think it was anything I’d want to read. It’s HARD. I’d never realized before how much work it was, even for those gifted people in my classes who did “hear” their stories right off. Drafts and voice and tweaking and word choice and why is that character there again?
Thank you. Yes. It’s HARD. This is why The Urge to Kill people who offer to split the money with you if they give you their Great Idea and you do the dull stupid labour of writing it up because the idea is the hard part and besides you already have the name and the publishing contacts, is pretty overwhelming. Fortunately most of these offers come by post/email. Back in the days when I went to more live things and people used occasionally to offer this blithering asininity to my face civilised restraint was more difficult.
But. Yes. It’s like wrestling alligators. WHY IS THAT CHARACTER FOLLOWING ME AROUND? GO AWAY. YOU DON’T BELONG IN THIS STORY. Er. Do you? What have I missed this time? Writing is also brilliant and fascinating and enormous fun . . . but those alligators bite hard. And the regeneration of major body parts is tiring and demoralising and takes time, which you probably haven’t got.
EMoon
It’s downright scary sometimes how much your process is like my process…the whole thing about each character’s voice, each book’s voice, each book’s vocabulary, so sometimes I can’t hear the word I need–none of the first/second/third choice words works in that sentence and I can spend hours digging through dictionaries hoping to find the one right one. The stuff I have to write down (revolving door, uniform, etc.) that has to come out later because who cares, it doesn’t matter only some of the details DO matter and I don’t know which ones until the book’s done or nearly done.
Scary? Hmm. I find it exactly the opposite—this seems to me so obviously the way stories must break into storytellers’ brains, get heard/figured out, get written, that I find it far more unsettling when I hear about some other writer’s entirely different process. Those people who write out complete outlines—story arcs, what happens in each chapter, characters’ names, descriptions and relationships—people who create files on different aspects of story and characters before they ever settle down to write the story part of the story—that’s scary. I went through a period when I was a teenager of (mostly) secretly reading everything I could get my hands on on how to write—secretly as one pursues any vice, or any unadmitted longing—and some of the advice clings round me still in cold, sticky, cobwebby sorts of shreds. I absolutely believe in ‘whatever works’ but . . . brrrr for the file-keepers.
I mostly don’t write down stuff that will come out later. I tend to have faith that if I’ve left something out it’ll clamour to get into the next draft. Certainly stuff does come out, but not usually the revolving door and the doorperson’s uniform. But I do keep some notes as I go, and sometimes the marginal notes to the notes to the notes (to the notes) get a little cramped.
* * *
* jaccairn
Also, MOT – I think I remember that yours is due sometime this month, It’s the sort of thing that might slip your mind when you’re so busy.
Snork. The things some people’s blog forum members remember. Thank you. Yes, Wolfgang is due this month and I’ve already booked him in.^ I hope you’re impressed. I’m so impressed I can hardly bear myself. (I think this is the first year I’ve ever remembered before the last minute.) Now I just have to implore the weather gods to be kind since the remains of the bus system between here and Warm Upford is not worth discussing. Hellhounds and I can perfectly well walk home one day and walk back the next, but not if we’re having gales and hail and winged monkeys and so on. Which we’re apparently going to have overnight. This is all because Peter had planned to go to Oxford tomorrow and have lunch with one of his cousins. No, no! said the weather gods, shaking themselves out of their long winter slumber, we can’t have promiscuous peregrinations! Where is that blizzard, we know we put it somewhere! —It hasn’t got up to freezing the last three days^^ and now we’re supposed to have SNOW. Ah . . . frell. Well, my yaktrax have been lonesome so far this winter . . . and snow will certainly keep me at home where I have nothing better to do than work. . . . ^^^
^ And he has to pass. Has to. In the first place I can’t afford a new car this year. In the second place . . . I still don’t want a new car. I want a new car less and less as I hear friends with shiny new cars talking about the way the computers in new cars run their lives. And go wrong, of course. You can learn to ignore that little flashing red light on the dashboard after the third time you’ve taken it in and paid £100 to be told there’s nothing wrong. Not so much the robot voice continuously telling you to fasten your seatbelt/add grinchflobby fluid to the ziggury system/placate the trolls with ham sandwiches.
^^ And my chocolate cosmos hate being indoors, so they’ll probably frelling croak this year too. Arrrgh. Furthermore, my gladiola bulbs arrived today. Gladiola bulbs are tender. Mail warehouses are rarely heated. At least mail warehouses where tender plants are held are rarely heated. Arrrgh. Don’t these mail-order bozos ever, you know, listen to the weather forecast? Hey, guys, we’re supposed to get three foot of snow tomorrow! Let’s ship all the banana trees!
^^^ Ajlr
I also wondered what the reaction of the hellhounds had been to the new Amazingly Loud Voice?
Chaos has always found my singing . . . disturbing. Darkness has always assumed that it’s just another daft human activity. It is perhaps hard on hellhounds that both at the mews and the cottage their bed is next to the piano/cheap electric keyboard. Chaos gets up and moves toward me cautiously, staring at my distorted face for clues. GO LIE DOWN YOU WRETCHED DOG.
I’m more worried about the neighbours. Do you remember—probably nearly a year ago now—I was fretting about singing at the cottage, where my office, with the keyboard in it, has the common wall with my semi-detached neighbour? (The keyboard itself, plugged into headphones, is silent.) The wall is floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, but I can still hear my neighbour climbing the stairs on the other side. Don’t worry, said Nadia, you don’t make nearly enough noise.
I think I probably do make enough noise now. Ah, the disadvantages of success. I can still sing while I do the washing-up—it’s on the far side from the common wall. I also sing out hurtling, while hellhounds pretend they don’t know me, and my impression is that people are starting to move to the opposite pavement (I used to think this was just a reaction to rampant hellhounds). Hey, this probably happens to Deborah Voigt too. I wish it had any effect on aggressive off lead dogs.
** The GUARDIAN is running a publicity draw to win a full degree Open University course. Details tomorrow. The OU is highly thought of so I, who don’t have nearly enough to do, had an idle look through their course list. Their language department is terrible. French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Welsh (Welsh?^) and Latin and (classical) Greek. That’s it?
^ Yes, I know, good for them, Celtic languages are struggling for survival, but in the context of only six modern languages offered it seems to me a bit startling.
First Pages
I have just been figuring out how much of SHADOWS I have to get through every day for the next thirty days.*
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.**
* * *
* Yes, I know. It’s already the 2nd of February and February is a short ratbag to begin with. But I’ve already told you I’m going to whine for a few days of March because February is indecently short.^ If my editor says ‘no’ I’ll sic Mongo on her.
^ Ask Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance.
** In case you’re wondering, yes, this does mean that I failed to reach my quota today. This is of course Very Bad . . . but it’s also not at all surprising. Or catastrophic. (Probably.) There are advantages to being old, wizened and cronelike in your chosen career: your standard errors and pitfalls become familiar, as do ways of coping with same, and less blood and hysteria are spilt.
I don’t know how common this is among the author sorority^ but one of the ways I know a story is ready to be written is that I know the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first scene. I know where to begin. Since my experience of writing is more about channelling or translating rather than some kind of pure feat of creation^^, and that the worst of the job is choosing the EXACT words, including what to write about and what to leave out—the famous getting character A from point B to point C problem^^^—being given a run at the obstacle to begin with is one of the ways I manage to wind myself up enough to begin. The first few pages of the first draft usually go down relatively straightforwardly and, as I work, which is not fast, relatively fast. Those first few pages of first draft usually feel—no, must feel—like a nice solid base . . . to start going spluuuuurgh smush GAAAAAH on, later.
In fact my first pages often change pretty dramatically over the three drafts. I get back to the beginning#, having learnt a lot about the story and characters in writing the previous draft, and realise that while the ‘voice’ is there it’s obscured by a lot of fluff and fuddle.## This awareness, not to say shock, tends to be most dramatic in stories told in first person, as SHADOWS is. Yeeep, Maggie would never say that. And then by the time I’ve got the first pages sorted (again) so that the book’s voice sounds as clear as I can get it at present, that draft is that much stronger because the first pages are . . . that much stronger. There’s a lot leaning on the first pages. If I haven’t got the first pages, I probably can’t write the book.
So I’m back at those crucial first pages again now. And this is the last draft.### Every frelling word needs to be right. I’m going to get words wrong because I can only write as well as I can, and I’m only too drearily mortal. But I need to get about 99% of the words right in the first half dozen pages. I can slip to 95% later on.
One of the peculiarities of this business of hearing the story’s voice is recognising it as different from your own. Well, duh. But it makes the translation/channelling/word-choice that much hairier, because you can’t just go for saying or describing something the best, whatever ‘best’ may be, you can. You have to do it with, and within, the story’s voice. There are times when I CANNOT think of another word for this or that~ that fits in the story’s voice. I can only think of how to say it in my voice. Arrrrgh. (So I highlight it, and keep going.) And I’ve given myself—or no, I haven’t, the frelling Story Council has given me—a trammel and a trickiness, this book: first person narrator, seventeen years old, in an alternative-modern world. (At least she’s a girl.) What I think of as my semi-forsoothly style, so any of my high-fantasy third-person-narration books, including PEGASUS~~, is the easiest base line for me the struggling scribe—although even semi-forsoothly varies from book to book because no book’s voice is like any other book’s voice. The bright sharp individual edge of a first person narration is a lot of fun, as is trying, an especially taxing exercise in these alt-mod stories, to ride the frelling slang till it settles down enough I start understanding it—but it also means that great swathes of my own vocabulary and my own way of expressing things are gone. Speaking of ‘yeeep’.
So. Anyway. I’ve done about half my necessary word-count today, but that’s not actually too bad. I’ve got several pieces of important slang imperfectly heard for two drafts nailed at last. I tend to ‘hear’ slang the way I ‘hear’ characters’ names, and especially when these are not words or names I know, it can take a lot of repetitions before I finally have what I need~~~.
Onward. Tomorrow I will catch up. By the end of tomorrow I will have accomplished the full page count for day two, as if day one had . . . behaved. —This sentence originally had the word ‘schedule’ in it but . . . that word and I have a matter/anti-matter relationship and I have a book to write.
^ Or even fraternity
^^ I wish. I’d love to feel that I was in control.+
+ Yes. I would write a sequel to SUNSHINE. And I would have finished PEG II this year. No, wait, I would have finished the one volume version two years ago. No, wait . . . it was an ELEMENTALS AIR short story. . . .
^^^ NO WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW IF IT’S A REVOLVING DOOR OR WHAT THE DOORPERSON’S UNIFORM LOOKS LIKE OR HOW MANY STEPS THERE ARE ON THE STAIR(S) OR WHAT THE COLOUR OF THE CARPET IS OR HOW MANY DOORS THERE ARE ON THE CORRIDOR OR HOW MANY GOBLINS WAITING IN THE LINEN CUPBOARD.+
+ An estimate of the goblins will do.
# Remember that I tend to write three drafts serially: first draft, beginning to end. Second draft, beginning to end. Third draft, beginning to . . . please the gods, end. I will go back and make notes or minor changes for consistency mid-draft, but mostly I keep going, and what I absolutely do NOT do is get bogged down rereading and tinkering. For me this is death and disaster. The story tells itself to me in flow and motion. My first priority is to keep it moving. I will read through the final draft after it’s FINISHED and tinker then.
## This time around this is reminding me of Nadia saying, at my first lesson, that she can hear what my voice is, and that we’re going to let it out of prison. The most extraordinary thing about leaving New Arcadia has been the live metaphor of my throat/voice/speaking up for myself—and singing. Nadia has always been able to get noises out of me I can’t get out of myself, but this week I swear I’m twice as loud as I was a month ago—before the sore throat closed me down. Twice as loud even when it’s only me reminding myself to relax my tongue and jaw and to let the air all the way in and to engage.
Wheeeeee.
### I hope.
~ Of course I am also afflicted with Menopause Brain.
~~ Despite the rabid gremlin infestation of other aspects of PEGASUS.
~~~ CHARACTERS MUMBLE. And since I’m mostly a ghost in their world saying ‘would you repeat that please’ doesn’t work. At best they probably stare at me and wonder what the cold patch in the room is.
SHADOWS?
YES.
DONE.
I just sent the finished second draft of SHADOWS to Merrilee and my editor. Pressed that email button. Zap.
And I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. Except I’m not going to sleep for a week. * I am going to take hellhounds on a long country hurtle tomorrow morning, I am going to order some plants for my garden(s) tomorrow afternoon**, and then I am going to go RING BELLS at Forza tomorrow evening.
And I will start on SHADOWS’ third and final draft on Thursday. Which I have promised for the end of February.***
But at this moment I am falling down with tiredness. †
* * *
* Well, maybe I can sleep for a week between now and tomorrow morning? Has anyone figured this out yet? It’s not quite the thirty-six hour day (or thereabouts) we all want, it’s just a little bulge off to one side about a little extra sleep. . . .
** The backlog of plant catalogues with corners of pages turned down has become a bit extreme. Also I have empty space to fill. There is nothing more beautiful to a gardener than empty space.
*** But I’ve already begun whining for a few days of March because February is so short.
† But I bet I could sing just a little before I fell down.