Momentous

Seems like novel is really finally off my desk for a while!  Will come back at copy-edit and proof stages, no doubt further tinkering will be in order, but this is a huge relief.

Finished rereading In the Woods last night.  There are some tonal instabilities (plus implausibility of narrator being so literary in his tastes), but it really was an unbelievably good debut.  Next up: The Likeness.  I vaguely think I read this one first, the first time around (order is non-essential).  In the tradition of Brat Farrar and The Ivy Tree, but quite different in tone.  Much looking forward to it.  (And also to Megan Abbott's Dare Me, whose official release is tomorrow but which I am hoping will appear magically on my Kindle at midnight, as preordered ebooks are wont to do.)

Much to do in next week and a half.  Revisions on Austen essay, a book review for a new venue (I know I said I wasn't going to do any more reviewing, but I'm doing this one as a test to see if I enjoy it more when it's a nonfiction book during a non-teaching time of the year!), course books to order (delinquency - this should have been done already), some work to read for students and colleagues.  Most significant task is beginning to delve back into the style book and finding what library stuff I need, as I'll be in Cayman for a couple weeks in mid-August and need to bring whatever books I might want with me. 

Seem to be quite busy, too, with physical therapy for my back, the meditation class and ongoing triathlon training.  Summer is not infinite!  (Really this is a good thing.)

Magic circles

This amazing set of pictures by my colleague Taylor Carman notates in a very different idiom the same sort of place and feeling I wanted to capture in my novel.  (Which, by the way, I am still wrestling with; there's one little penultimate scene that isn't right, and a couple other tweaks, but I am going to have to wait and have another crack at it in the very early morning.  Tomorrow is the day I'm hoping to do a long endurance workout starting at 10am, so if I don't write first, it's hopeless: the pleasant post-exercise brain fog will neutralize intellectual activity later in the day.)

Catch-up

I have been working pretty much at capacity; I had to sort of just skip my birthday on Saturday, it would have been too disruptive to switch over to human contact mode!  Finished my last-hundred-pages-from-third-to-first-person rewrite by midday Monday, got a round of comments by the end of the day and sent off a next version a few hours ago.  Will have one more chunk of work on it again tomorrow.  I know the ending isn't quite right, I have a tack to pursue...

I'm finding True Believers slow going; it feels too long, and the voice is unpersuasive in certain respects.  Impatient to get to the big reveal, but not so much so that I don't keep on putting it aside in search of a more immersive read!  It is locally enjoyable but cumulatively puzzling.

Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine is just a hair too whimsical to be perfectly suited to my tastes, but I thought it was excellent: it definitely lives up to the advance hype.  Cheryl Strayed's Wild is also very immersive, though it seems to me that it's a good book because she's an interesting person rather than because of anything about the writing as such.  (It caused me to think with nostalgia for two other memoirs of self-examination and pilgrimage I have read recently that are written by people who clearly think much more as I do about life, the universe and everything, namely Tim Parks's Teach Us to Sit Still and Gideon Lewis-Kraus's A Sense of Direction!)  Strayed's book has interesting things in common with Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water; I gather they are both in the same writing group, it would be an odd experience to be workshopping drafts with someone who had so much in common with oneself.  I am not sure it would be entirely enjoyable!  Other obvious comparables for Strayed would be Elizabeth Gilbert and Alice Sebold, whose memoir Lucky deserves the widest acclaim.

Then the other night when I truly was in the pit of absolute fatigue I downloaded and reread The Hobbit.  I have a stronger attachment to this book than to the Lord of the Rings trilogy as such; as a very small child, I had The Golden Treasury of Children's Literature, and I believe this was where I first encountered an excerpt from Tolkien's novel, though I don't have the volume to hand to check.  The narrative voice is perhaps less capably rendered than Lewis's in the Narnia books, but it is a delightful book regardless.

Tonight I am going to the theater with G. (we're seeing this).  We will undoubtedly have a good dinner afterwards, which will be a welcome reprieve from excessive computer time!  My back was doing quite a bit better, after swearing off yoga and boot camp, but I had a physical therapy appointment yesterday that has totally done it in.   That is counterintuitive...

Closing tabs:

Margaret Mahy has died.  (Read The Changeover if you don't know it already.)

Interview with a very young Neil Gaiman.

Everything's coming up roses

Just a quick post to say that I started my first-person rewrite of BoMH part III on Monday night and I'm incredibly excited about it!  It's totally turned around how I feel about the book: there's always been a claustrophobic hothouse-type aspect to the story that I have disliked, and this opens things up in a funny and interesting way that I am very much enjoying.  Haven't been so interested and engaged by something I was writing since a day I stole in February to reimmerse myself in a piece I wrote a while ago about the 'minute particular' in life-writing and the novel.  (It's one of my projects for August to get that out as a real article.)

I was unusually frenzied in my work life from December through May, and then in the aftermath of that I was uncharacteristically grumpy from May pretty much right up until now.  I'm hoping this marks a real turning point. 

I had one of those days yesterday where everything just seems to go right (clearly this follows in the psychological aftermath of  near-magical Monday-night and Tuesday-morning writing sessions).  I walked down a block I don't usually traverse and found myself in the amazing surrounds of the flower market, which is really like something out of a fairy story; I had an amazing lunch (best conversation ever!) with my editor at the hyper-palindromic Ilili (the space is beautiful and the food is very good; I recommend the prix fixe lunch - we shared grape leaves and hummus for appetizers, then I had the grilled chicken salad and the "Ilili candy bar" for dessert); I generally avoid crosstown buses, as they are often slower than walking, but heat changes the equation and the M23 - I had known this but somehow forgot it - actually goes all the way to Chelsea Piers; I had an enjoyable run workout on the indoor track at Chelsea Piers followed by a dip in the pool; then I took the M23 again to the first meeting of a mindfulness-based stress reduction class I found online and that seems exactly what I've been looking for.

Midnight oil

It's just after midnight, and I'm relieved to say that after a brutal marathon day and evening of work, I've just sent a pretty decent Magic Circle rewrite to my editor.  We will have one more pass through it next week; the ending still isn't right, and I did a lot of new writing for the last stretch that will probably look rough when I come back to it after a few days off.  Final deadline: next Friday.  I will be glad to see the back of this one, though of course books always come back at you for copy-edit, proofing, etc. 

Need to leave for the airport in about 5.5 hours, so I think I will pack now and then see if there's any chance I might get a few hours of sleep.  It may not be an option, as it's been 3 or 4 in the morning before I've fallen asleep the last couple nights....

Light reading around the edges: David Gordon's The Serialist, which I absolutely loved.

Bonus links: nice swim bit with shout-out to my old teacher Doug Stern; Olympic training technology; "First, then, read your book."

Clutter, tethers

"Since this study, I can’t stop enumerating the contents of fridge surfaces."

(I was laughing as I read this: the suggested correlation between number of fridge magnets and total amount of stuff in household struck me as suspect, with the thought in my head being something like "my fridge has a fair number of magnets on it, but I don't have an excessive amount of stuff, especially if you exclude books."  Then I saw the actual picture in the article and flinched with horror - clearly I do not have a lot of magnets on my refrigerator!)

The illustration in the article:

My fridge:

The magnets themselves are a set of Andy Warhol cats my mother gave me, plus a few miscellaneous others; they are holding up gym schedules for Chelsea Piers and local yoga, a postcard a friend sent from Alaska and a snapshot of freesias at an English flower shop sent to me by Becky from Cambridge, a book of stamps and the mammogram referral that is for September and that needs to stay somewhere findable in the meantime.

(I have a fantasy of living in a monastic cell with no stuff!)

I am slightly at the end of my tether after two nights of very poor sleep on the quality/quantity front.  I will do a marathon novel revision session today, at least after I go to the allergist for shots, but I don't think I'm going to make my deadline.  Need to leave for the airport at 5:30am tomorrow and suspect that means I will just stay up all night.  Not feeling very good about this!

"T for take all"

From the OED online, definition for "teetotum":

 

A small four-sided disk or die having an initial letter inscribed on each of its sides, and a spindle passing down through it by which it could be twirled or spun with the fingers like a small top, the letter which lay uppermost, when it fell, deciding the fortune of the player; now, any light top (sometimes a circular disk pierced by a short peg), spun with the fingers, used as a toy.The letters were originally the initials of Latin words, viz. T totum, A aufer, D depone, N nihil. Subsequently they were the initials of English words, T being interpreted as take-all: see quot. 1801. On the French totum or toton, the letters are T, A, D, R, meaning, according to Littré, Totum, tout, Accipe, prends, Da, donne, Rien (nothing).

1720   D. Defoe Life D. Campbell (1841) 50   A very fine ivory T totum, as children call it.

1778   F. Burney Evelina III. xxi. 240   And turn round like a tetotum.

1800   Sporting Mag. 15 48   A man was lately convicted..for selling a teetotum.

1801   J. Strutt Glig-gamena Angel-ðeod iv. iv. 341   When I was a boy the te-totum had only four sides, each of them marked with a letter; a T for take all; an H for half, that is, of the stake; an N for nothing; and a P for put down, that is, a stake equal to that you put down at first.

1818   T. Moore Fudge Family in Paris v. 23   Though, like a tee~totum, I'm all in a twirl, Yet even (as you wittily say) a tee~totum Between all its twirls gives a letter to note 'em.

1893   W. S. Gilbert Utopia (Limited) 11,   She'll waltz away like a teetotum.

Closing tabs

Jay Winter on Paul Fussell.

Susanna Rustin interviews Adam Phillips for the Guardian.

The FT has a very good lunch with George R. R. Martin (site registration required).

"It was as if a light had been Nookd" (courtesy of Anjuli and Alice).

I've been trying to stay off the computer due to what is probably a slightly pulled back muscle, but it's somewhat better this morning.  It is fishy that my back is sore enough to prevent me writing my overdue Austen essay but still permits a couple of hours of exercise every day!  Really I was just working too hard from January through May and am now having the traditional post-semester willpower collapse - having now slightly bored myself by watching the first two seasons of House as if under a compulsion, it is now preferable to write the essay, which I am hoping I might finish by the end of the day tomorrow so that I can get back to The Magic Circle for one more round of revision.

Done!

It is sent.  That is a relief.  I do have this little piece to write for Monday, but it's not a proper review, just minor thoughts in the form of an essay, so I think it should be easier and more enjoyable than usual to write (hope those are not famous last words).  I am weary! 

Very happy at the prospect of taking the next few evenings off from work, also at having a good deal of time to exercise over the coming week.

Mid-morning update

9:45am (Cayman doesn't observe daylight savings).  Just typed in final edits for first half (parts one and two); it will only now need printing out and a final proof against the marked-up edit where new typing may have introduced new errors.

Second half (part three) still needs a few 'bits'; I will write them on my computer at Cafe del Sol (I have spent many happy hours here working on something or other!), then go back to the condo and print the whole thing out.  Determined to be done by 5pm.  If I finished by 2:30, I could go to yoga at 3, but that seems a bit of a stretch (!)....

Two thoughts in the meantime:

• I overuse the words "as" and "that"
• Though I think that sometimes the effect of elegant variation should be deliberately embraced, it is probably just as well that I have only used the word "confiture" once (there are seven instances of jam)

Update

It's 10pm on Wednesday and I have just finished typing in the last of the edits.  I still have a list of three 'bits' and two elliptical phrases on notecards that need to be written and integrated, plus a couple of stray paragraphs in an outtake file that I want to keep but don't have a place for.  Can't do any more work tonight (need to get the apartment ready for the catsitter and also pack), but should be in Cayman by lunchtime tomorrow and will trust that Thursday afternoon/later evening and Friday daytime give me sufficient time to write and integrate these last bits and then perform a final copy-edit and proof.  It is going out by the end of the day on Friday come hell or high water, a promise one should be cautious about making on an island at sea level....

Taught my last class of the semester today.  The final Clarissa seminar on Monday was a treat; rather sad to see that one end!  Am bringing more work with me on this trip than I had ideally hoped: in addition to the novel stuff, I have time-sensitive school things (2 MA essays to comment on, plus final set of assignments from lecture students that will need at least brief emailed comments if not full marking), a book review to write for Monday and the stack of Austen novels I want to reread in preparation for an essay I owe for a forthcoming Blackwell Companion to English Literature (due date of May 15).  However I say with a combination of guilt and glee that if I'd stayed in town, there are three work-related parties I would have had to attend, and another party I probably would have felt I couldn't avoid, and really I will much prefer quiet time working, so that is fine!  Not a holiday, in short, just a very pleasant temporary removal.

24 hours behind schedule

Par for the course with this sort of thing.  Visitors over the weekend complicated work schedule.  Can't work such long stints as I used to in the old days, when I would toil maniacally from 8am to 4pm, nap for a couple of hours then work again from 8pm to 3am: it was exactly that sort of work habit that led over many years to huge amounts of insomnia and anxiety, and I've been trying recently not to work after about eight at night unless absolutely unavoidable.  Next three nights it will be unavoidable, I think, though I will have to see how it goes.

• Still have six little slips of paper that need writing/amplifying as real inserts or passages because they were too complicated for me to write easily (an imitation New Yorker Talk of the Town piece about the BoMH game; a cryptic conversation between two characters, overheard by a third; notes that just say "present is a game and game play precipitates an argument that moves forward rel. of Ruth and Anna" and "lipstick/bullet returns in pt. 3" respectively; "old and new signs in Morningside Park," which I remember seeing and which was also noted for me by E. but which I now can't precisely locate in my memory, so that I need to walk back over there and remind myself where they are; one note even more inchoate that I am not sure I will act upon)
• Haven't yet started typing revisions
• But have written up all other new 'bits' from my notecards

Today I will basically be knocked out of action for book work from 10:30am till 7pm (last Clarissa seminar, hasty commenting on assignments I'm hoping to give back in lecture, Austen lecture, office hours, allergy shots at Columbus Circle plus quick meetup with catsitter to hand over keys).  But I have to have a second work session this evening; if I don't get a good chunk of these edits typed in before I go to bed tonight, I'm not going to be happy!

Tomorrow has annoying bits and bobs scheduled (wish it were a complete blank): 8am doctor's appointment to get prescription refills on asthma stuff; noon department meeting; 2-5pm blocked out for meeting on college honors, though I think it won't take that long; 5pm meeting with a student.  I don't teach on Wednesday till 2:40, and it's a shorter day for me than Monday, so I should be able to keep working well into the evening so long as I get my packing done as well.  (Need to bring books for two different pieces I'll be working on while I'm at B.'s, a short piece for Bookforum that will require 4-5 tomes and the Blackwell Companion essay on Austen that means I probably will bring my complete set of Austen World's Classics volumes.) 

Flight Thursday requires departure from home by 5:45am, so though I should be in Cayman by lunchtime, it pretty much knocks that out as a workday given near absence of sleep.  I will prefer to email the final manuscript to my editor before I leave for the airport, but I can do my final pass through the manuscript on Friday if I need to and still be able to get it out before the end of the business day.

Pictures from an institution

I finished the initial big edit this morning.  It will sound overly intricate if I try and explain my method in words - to me it seemed the simplest way of handling a complex revision situation!  But: I went through the manuscript from start to finish, doing quite a bit of copy-editing and some story streamlining, editing where I could but marking anything that was too complicated or demanding for me to figure out on the spot on an external card or piece of paper, coded by color depending on what strand of the story it belonged to:

Green (4): Ruth's game "Trapped in the Asylum."
Blue (12): Anna's game "Places of Power."
Red (2): "The Bacchae on Morningside Heights." 
Yellow (12): posts for Anna's blog, titled Anna's Aphorisms. 
White (9): general story stuff. 

That means I now have 37 little 'bits' to write, some just a couple sentences of what E. calls 'counter-history' for a neighborhood spot and others more complex in terms of needing to establish something about a relationship or a plot development or even serve as an entire new scene (only a couple of these I hope).  About to go out and tromp round the neighborhood for a few final physical details; will probably be writing these 'bits' over the next three days.

The novel falls into three parts, so once I've finished with the new 'bits' for part I, I'll go ahead and start typing in those revisions (the goal is to have written precise enough inserts so that it really is merely transcription, with only occasional need for an extra sentence or two of transition or alteration to reconcile contradictions).  I work best when I am away from the internet, which is why I prefer to keep things in the realm of pen and hard copy for as high a proportion of my work time as possible.  I will pick off the 'easy' bits first rather than doing them either by category or in order from start to finish; once they get written, they will get clipped or stapled to the relevant page of the manuscript.

So: Try and finish all new writing by Sunday morning, type the remaining edits on Sunday and Monday, print out the full new version Monday night, perform fiendishly intense copy-edit on Tuesday, type revisions and do a final proof before sending to E. on Wednesday afternoon.  This schedule may be impossibly compressed; if I have to, I'll take the manuscript with me to Cayman on Thursday and finish up with proofreading and corrections on Friday during the day.  I would prefer to be done by Wednesday evening but Friday end of day will certainly do.

I am teaching the final tenth or so of Clarissa on Monday and need to reread those pages this weekend (roughly 100K words); also have to give two lectures this coming week on Austen's Persuasion (I've taught the course before, so I don't need to write them fresh, but 'reinhabiting' old lecture notes is its own obligation, and I prefer to reread even very familiar novels before class).  A morning doctor's appointment and an afternoon with a good many meetings scheduled on Tuesday, so work time will be unfortunately curtailed; I also need to get allergy shots on Monday and Wednesday as I will be out of town the whole subsequent week.  Slightly overdid it on exercise on Wednesday and Thursday, so am taking today as wholly devoted to novel revision; it gave me a pang to skip midday boot camp downtown, and midday spin class, but there is something sore at the back of my left knee, it needed the rest....

Update

Slogging away at novel revisions in short frequent sittings.  Think I am still on track to finish for the 25th.  Ready for semester to be over!

Miscellaneous light reading around the edges: Tobias Buckell's Arctic Rising; Garth Nix's Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz; and an exceptionally charming self-published novel by a talented newcomer whose book I came across because I fell for his wife's triathlon training blog last year when she and I were both training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene.  (She successfully completed the race; alas, I didn't make it to the start due to a particularly bad bout of bronchitis.)  So, strongly recommended: M. H. Van Keuren's Rhubarb.  I think comparisons of a book in this sort of vein (aliens, paranormal radio, pie!) will inevitably be first of all to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker books; there's a little bit of the feel of the appealing TV series Supernatural; but really it's a very fresh and appealing novel in a mode I especially enjoy.

Bonus link:  crab computing!  (And more here.)

An update

Six days in a row of chipping away at the thing have been beneficial.  I've finished a line edit all the way through, and the manuscript is now bristling with post-its in places where I need to draw out or amplify or weave together different threads.

Today I made this chart (click for a fuller view!), with color-coding for the three main games the characters develop and play: Trapped in the Asylum, Places of Power and The Bacchae on Morningside Heights.  (The yellow pen I used for the fourth element, a blog called Anna's Aphorisms, has not reproduced very vividly.)  The colors show very clearly the extent to which I pick up a game and then let it drop; I need it all to be much more thoroughly interspersed, including some new material that still needs to be written.  One afternoon very soon, too, I will go and wander around Morningside Park again and pin down locations for the reconceived final showdown.

I have what seems to me a fairly natural and in that sense 'hard' deadline of April 25 to send the book back to my editor; that's the last day I'm teaching, too, so it's not exactly intuitive, but I'm going to B.'s the day after for a week (if I don't go right when I finish teaching, I then can't get away until after graduation, so it's better to seize the moment), and I also have a book review due on the 30th and an academic essay due May 15 that I think I will need to clear before it makes sense to come back to the novel.  So, two weeks of intensive revision: I've bought a lot of pens and post-its and other supplies and am ready to dig in. . . .