Daily Archives: April 9, 2008

Hearthcraft Book Update

I hate working after the boy has gone to bed. It pushes back my falling-asleep time by a few hours, since it takes me a while to wind down. I felt it necessary tonight, though. There’s a lot to do.

As a result the book file is now basically done up to Chapter Five, minus a sentence here and there that I’ve marked. There have been a total of ten pages deleted today, mostly through cutting out lines here and there (the six pages gone at one blow aside). It flows. It’s tighter. I’m being merciless about the bits needing too much work to be completed.

On the other hand, I discovered a new hearth goddess today, so hey.

There’s a chapter and a half of hard copy edits to transfer to the file, and then I run out of edited hard copy. Since I have zero attention span and focus working on the computer in the forenoon, tomorrow morning is reserved for hard copy editing; after lunch I’ll return to Chapter Five and start transferring.

The file currently stands at 55,167 words and 224 pages. I’ve paused at page 84 in the file, and at 120 in the hard copy. Lots of stuff goes out, other stuff goes in.

I should eat, but I’m really not hungry.

Lunch Break

I just cut an entire six pages because they didn’t fit. I’d feel better about it if I hadn’t spent hours writing them months ago in the first place, and a good forty minutes rewriting them in the cafe on Monday.

I didn’t go to work in the cafe after all this morning. Even the smallest movement is painful, and I’m in a no-people frame of mind. Dissolving into tears in the car after dropping the boy off was a marked sign that editing in a public place wasn’t going to work. So I came home, which was depressing in itself. I’m now halfway through the printout of the manuscript, and on page 40 of the file. The latter is a rather unreliable guide to progress, as it no longer matches the pagination of the printout (which makes for some puzzled flipping when my scribbles on page Z say to ‘move to page X’ and page X of the file is now Z+9).

It’s been a frustrating morning, on top of the already low mood.

Songs and Poems for Solo Cello

But this was in the parcel waiting for me at the post office, one of the two I missed on Monday when I was working in the cafe. And I’m kind of glad the upstairs neighbours aren’t home because I’m listening to it at a rather loud volume. It’s both beautiful and depressing. I can hear every shift Sutter makes and the movements of her bow arm (not because of poor recording or shoddy technique, but because of her phrasing and the stunning acoustics of the church in which it was recorded), and I wish I could play like that.

I’m going to go heat up a piece of last night’s lasagna and then come back and slog some more.