Yesterday, as of this writing, I set down the last word of the first draft of the next novelette. But it's not done yet. There's a bit in the middle(ish) that I can't write until I've written most of, if not all of, no. 46. (There's also a bit towards but not quite at the end of no. 46 that I won't be able to have written until I've written most of no. 45, which, of course, I will already have done at the point I get to it, thanks to the Arrow of Time.)
In a day or so, then, I'll crack open the file for no. 46 and get that under way, while the first draft for no. 45 lies fallow. If you're a Patreon or Comrade, that means there'll be another couple-three months at least before you'll be seeing the actual start of the next bit of story, but at least you'll get two novelettes in reasonably close proximity, time-wise. Most likely. There's some slips yet, betwixt cup and lip.
(I trust when you see why, you'll understand, and appreciate. I hope, rather. Have I mentioned that this third season is, structurally speaking, the most complex, by far? —The third movement of any symphony is a dance movement, typically speaking, a burst of playful, even joyous energy, after the contemplative turn of the second. And so.)
In other news: I've finished re-reading Ada, and am once again left with the particular admixture of a definite but ill-defined unpleasantness in and among the satisfaction of having done so. —I do not like that story, with its pettily ugly jealousies that make no sense (jealousy makes no sense, I know, but still), I do not like those casually cruel, hopelessly aristocratic characters, I am helpless before that book. Next, I suppose, I ought to put my money where my mouth went, and re-read the Spear Cuts through Water, so as to be able to say something about how and why it is that though I do admire a lot of what it does, I did not like it, but I'm also tempted by the Orange Eats Creeps again, and Already Dead, and of all things Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (and meanwhile, all the unread to-be-reads, Aspects and Ash and Ordinary Time and Vineland and Laurie Marks's Logics)—
Distract, distract. Fill the waking hours with noise and color and light. Find the words and take them in and turn them over and set them down. Work, work on. One down. Ish. Twenty-one to go.
Posted 20 days ago.
