I'm finally fixing up A Suitable Lover for professional submission. The online version is seriously messed up: much worse than my saved manuscript (among other things, the uploading process elided words here and there, and an occasional phrase, sentence, and in at least one case, a really important scene. I don't know how much is due to user ( Read more... )

I finally figured out how to make the big reveal funny instead of tragic. I am sooo pleased. It involves pirates and race politics ( Read more... )

I read somewhere that Franz Kafka thought he was writing comedies and was dismayed that people didn't laugh when they read his books, and that Jaroslav Hasek thoughthe was writing tragedies and was dismayed when people did laugh ( Read more... )

Wrote: half the last chapter of the romantic comedy, and a chapter of the thing about the guy who is at one with the water system and enmeshed in a political struggle he doesn't understand and doesn't want to care about until people start threatening him ( Read more... )

I've been taking buproprion for several years now, off-label: it helps a wee bit with focus, forgetfullness, and stupid sleep habits, and now I'm accustomed to it and when I miss doses I have more trouble with those things, especially the stupid sleep habits.

When Ted died the health uinsurance people transferred me from the workers' account to the ( Read more... )

This afternoon we're I'm getting in a rental storage shed and Friday a dumpster.  So yesterday and today, with a bit of help from a couple of friends, I pruned the apple tree and the rose that grows in it back to nine feet off the ground where the shed will sit: ditto the neighbor's bottlebrush tree that mostly grows over the driveway: cleared all ( Read more... )

I posted Chapter 6 of The Conduit, which is 7 and most of 8 of the original. I started 7, so I'd know where I was with it ( Read more... )

So now I know how financial aid for foreign medical schools works, and that's why we're taking out a loan on the house. Just for this year, so far, because we don't want to be paying on the rest of it for longer than we have to. Also because the interest rates on the Stafford loans are not much worse than we can get on the house ( Read more... )

I'm dealing with my lack of focus by surrendering to it, and writing whatever I can work on at the moment. Which means I'm plugging my way through the last chapter of A Suitable Lover on some days (the chapter is terrible and I get only 750 words or so at a time and frequently lose a hundred or two), and rewriting The Conduit on others, and ( Read more... )

First Flush training this morning and this afternoon I get a free entry to Long Marine Lab for being so good. And right now, I'm writing the final set piece for the suitable lover, the first time I've worked on it since the last time the computer went south ( Read more... )