7 August 2004

I hate to say that it's got its own gravitation now, but I feel like things are starting to fall together. Maybe they won't keep falling; maybe I'll have another hill to overcome before it's the last downhill pull on this book. Or maybe this is the last downhill. I don't know.

Whatever it is, I've gotten back into the phase of writing where I can just add words, scenes, chapters, where things are coming off the outline smoothly, where I think, yes, all right, this stuff might be worth keeping. I turned a corner with it yesterday.

I feel like one of my physics professors on the birth of his fifth or sixth child. Someone asked him if they were done, now that they had this one, and he said, "I don't know, but we're closer to done than we were." He paused and said, "Of course, I said that with the last one, too." I may be done turning corners with this book. Or I may not. We'll see.

Maybe my theme song for the rest of this book should be Jethro Tull's "Thinking Round Corners."

I have some more voice today. I can talk nearly normally but not loudly, and I can't sing yet. I managed real food out of the house for dinner last night, but it wore me out. I woke up too early this morning (slept funny on my arm and it fell asleep), and I'm still pretty worn down. I'm also still dizzy, because I've got a little cough and don't want to have a bigger one while I'm getting my voice back and starting to get better, so I'm still taking the yellow spheres of death. All this means I'm still lying down a lot. I don't think I'm going anywhere today. I went places yesterday.

Also, yesterday I finished Will Shetterly's Chimera and read Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! #2 and Dennis Gardner's Minnesota Treasures: Stories Behind Historic Places. I was particularly happy with the Gardner in comparison with some other Minnesota geography/history books I've encountered. He was knowledgeable about engineering and architecture but also respected how Minnesotans actually live instead of bemoaning their (our) failure to uphold some utopian ideal or another. Also, some of the places were out of the way, so it wasn't just another "look, there's the Basilica" book.

Now I'm reading Carol Berg's Transformation, which started out a bit slow for me but has sucked me in well enough. Will it be a favorite? I doubt it. Will I read the rest of the series? Most probably. Especially if Stella has them to lend to me.

Okay. Going to read and lie down and try to get a few things done slowly but steadily.