Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Yesterday, despite Day 2 of the headache, I wrote 1,097 words and completed "The Dry Salvages." It's weighing in at 30,412 words, before the revisions and tweaking that I'll do today. That number might go up, or down, just a bit. The ms. is an odd looking thing, lying here on my desk. I've never perpetrated anything like it. It looks like an aborted attempt at a novel, pretty much the way Murder of Angels looked when I gave up on it in the spring of 2001. Presently, the ms. comes to 144 pp. (I'd predicted 150 at the start; not bad). I might like novella length. Maybe. I'll have to do at least one more to be sure. It has more room to move about than a short story, but isn't so vast as a novel, so doesn't seem so prone to force one to pad and stretch and prattle long after the time to shut up has come and gone.
Today, Spooky and I will proofread and continuity-check and fact-check and so forth, and tonight I'll send the final draft to Bill Schafer. And then, dear loves, I get a frelling vacation. Even though I know that there's work to be done, I'm taking a couple of weeks off, maybe as long as a month. If I waited until a time when there wasn't work waiting to be done, I'd never, ever take a vacation again. I'll feel guilty and lazy and irresponsible, but I'm doing it anyway. I may spend the bulk of the time exercising, or at least doing active things. But I'll keep up the blogger. This chapter can be titled, "The Writer's Holiday, or Giving My Ass a Break."
We'll also be taking a briefish respite from eBay. My thanks to everyone who's bid or bought in this last round of auctions. And if you're one of those slackers who reads my free blog, but still hasn't bought a copy of Low Red Moon, you can easily remedy that right this very second.
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