Diversion

Keeping the post below from skewing entirely bleak and maudlin, there are those things mitigating the depressiveness. For one, the weather's something.

For two, the book continues amusing. I hit a real standstill there in reading it for myself, after the layoff, but have gotten back into it again now. It still seems to me almost too-easy reading; for five hundred plus pages, it feels like it's going by quickly. I don't mean to say it's insubstantial; and there's a point to which I expect my own depth of experience with the work (as opposed to familiarity; there are huge swaths of this thing I am completely surprised by, and have no memory of creating). But it doesn't feel as "heavy" I suppose, as I expected/was half afraid it might be. I reached a passage of exposition yesterday, and it felt like a nice little interlude, rather than a bog-down.

We shall see, of course, whether agents and editors agree with this.


Anyway, I'm nearing the halfway point, and it has held up well as a read. I can point out one major passage where "my research is showing" as the kids call it. But really that one point is about the worst of it. There are about two screws in need of tightening, but those are mechanical things. Otherwise, the machinery does work, and without much grinding (I have found so far). I've really been able to read without actually editing, except for the occasional anteek-speek word choice I've corrected, or typos and grammatical errors. Actual "work" does really seem to be done on this.

It's not as gratifying as it might be if the waiting weren't so painful, and certainly if I were occupied, during my days, with a JOB.

But at least, unemployed and frustrated, I still know I have created something, that if none of the dang irons in the fire appear to be heating up, that there is something else worthwhile I have accomplished.