We’ve mostly been subsisting on bread and cheese and fruit and such, but I was craving something hot (it’s a little chilly here), so we ended up going into downtown Highlands for dinner at Off the Hook. Alex sweet-talked them into letting us hang out in the upstairs room, where we were the only ones there, which was perfect — we could talk and still hear the live music from downstairs.
I had a glass of prosecco to celebrate finishing a book. Book! Also a very nice New England clam chowder, some of Alex’s fries and Susan’s onion rings, and a little of my pasta — by that point, I was so full, I ended up bringing most of it home. It’ll make a nice meal for a writer in the next few days.
After that, came back, had an hour-long conversation with Susan about her feedback on the Jump Space book and my writing career plans in general, very helpful, even if I was contentious and difficult for parts of it. I’m just that way, folks. I’m sure it’s very annoying.
And then I opened up the file for Indenture, discovered that I had 43,000 words instead of the 50,000 I vaguely remembered, also discovered a letter from my agent that I’d forgotten about, which was very enthusiastic about the first 30K words I’d sent him, which you’d think for any sane writer would have led to her immediately sitting down and pounding out the rest of the book, but instead, here I am, years later, picking it up again, gah. My career instincts are maybe not so good.
But I sent it on to workshop, and on to some other friends who might want to read it, and in a month I’ll have their feedback and then I’ll dive in, and I am pretty hopeful that by mid-June, I’ll have a draft ready to send to Russ. We’ll see. Regardless, checked that box — another book, out of my hands, for a month, at least. (So calm down, brain. Enough with the freaking out already.)
And THEN I opened up the cancer memoir file, which Stephanie (I think it was her, someone on the team) had created by copying over all my blog entries, and I’ll start work on editing that tomorrow.
A very good day’s writing work. I am extremely tired. A little sauna, then a shower, then bed. Tomorrow, I have a host of meetings in the city, but am hoping to get some writing done on the ferry, at least. We’ll see.
