Thursday, February 27, 2003
Yesterday was a day of much work and progress. There are far too few of those. Days when everything just happens the way that it should.
I have no idea what sort of day today will be.
I do know that I need to get through chapters Six, Seven, and Eight of Low Red Moon, because I need to finish with the proofreading on Monday, if possible (I have to be out of town on Tuesday and would like to see this done before then). I am very much enjoying reading the novel. That's something else that happens far too infrequently, me enjoying something that I've written. Low Red Moon is, on the one hand, a far darker novel than Threshold, and far, far darker than Silk, but it's also peppered throughout with an unexpected humour. I've never thought myself much for humour, but reading through the ms., there are short passages that are absolutely hilarious. And I think they're needed.
The predominant sort of correction in this ms. seems to be the insertion of missing words. It's a sign of how quickly I wrote the novel, and how deeply I was immersed in its writing. I'm sure the words were there in my head at the time, they just never made it out onto the page. "The mockingbird cocked its furtively to one side and blinked its small black eyes." But these are the easy things to fix. Unlike continuity problems. So far, I haven't encountered any of those, though. No one's eyes have suddenly changed colour in the middle of a chapter. If anyone knows whether or not there are motels on Pawtucket Avenue in Providence, please e-mail me. Neither Spooky nor I can remember and it's relevant. Anyway, we made it through chapters Four and Five yesterday. Things are getting interesting.
And the e-mail keeps coming in. Marci Kiser writes:
But dearest Caitlin, you can't use Book 4. It's already the title of an Aleister Crowley work. Perhaps you should just approach it as ostentatiously as possible and just call it Shadows, and the Queens Thereof or something else with that vague grandiose feeling. Or something silly like Satin, and progressing through the lives of the Silk characters through all the varied fineries, until reaching Burlap or Mixed Fibers.
That's the most sensible suggestion I've heard thus far. Perhaps Hairshirt would be appropriate for this one . . .
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