I’m going back over the last few chapters to iron out some plot problems. Little incongruities, mainly, but that’s what this draft is for (I’ve decided), getting the logic of the story working. The next draft is for polishing the prose which involves, in this project, cutting away everything extra. Minimalism is the goal, which…

I don’t absolutely love it! But at least the things that need to happen are happening in the right order now, which is enough to let me move onward. I’m hoping the next part won’t be this difficult, and maybe it won’t.

Very minimal progress. Our car broke down yesterday and I was a bit anxious waiting to hear from the mechanic (I now know they didn’t get a chance to look at it today and it’ll be tomorrow) which didn’t make for great concentration. I wrote a few lines. Eventually I’ll get tired of posting every…

at this block. I’ll get this chapter finished eventually! Maybe even tomorrow. The next few I’m projecting to go more quickly but I guess we’ll see when we get there. There is no hurry (except maybe to finish this book and get it out there before the publishing industry collapses).

Just two tiny new paragraphs, but I’m happy. (Can’t stop thinking about JR, by the way. Part of me wants to dive directly into Gaddis’s even longer first novel (The Recognitions) but that would be silly, right? I am going to read a long, dense, everything novel though, because that’s where I still am.)

At the end of last year I finished a draft of a follow-up to my novella Polymer. Polymer was both very weird and also weirdly easy to write, and it’s been pretty agonizing that I haven’t been able to catch that same wave of inspiration to complete Violetgold. But I’m chipping away at it. Little…