Battling through to a kind of finish ...

A rather singleminded focus day today, but here's this morning's meditation:

Meditation 215

He offers
not money

but healing.
Miraculous afternoon.

Though sometimes I wonder
what a lifelong

lame beggar
might do

in the years
that followed after.


For most of today, I'm simply been striding determinedly through the edit of Hallsfoot's Battle, attempting to change scene viewpoints and make the final battle scenes less fragmented. Though I have to say that the nature of battle is in itself pretty fragmented, I would imagine. I've typed and groaned, and muttered and typed, and muttered some more. In between pacing the flat like a mad goat and wondering where the hell the chocolate is. So no great changes there from a normal writing day then. I'm pleased to say however that I've completed the first tranche of the editing process, and I shall attempt to start the nitty-gritty part of shifting things around in a more detailed way tomorrow. Onward and downward, eh.

I must admit though that I've had great waves of existential despair and wondering why the hell I'm bothering - after all, nobody's leapt back to me with amazement in the fifteen months it's been doing the rounds to say they desperately want to publish The Gifting, so who on earth is going to want the second in a trilogy? In fact, publishers haven't even bothered to reject it, not even to the agent. They've just ignored it entirely. Really, I begin to wonder if I'm actually invisible. So, I have two very small publishers that I've submitted The Gifting to directly, and if I hear nothing by the end of the year, then I'll self-publish. If that happens, then I don't think I'll actually submit Hallsfoot's Battle to anyone. It's really not worth the pain and terrible silence, to my mind. One must consider one's mental health, when all's ... err ... written and done.

In the middle of all this, I've also got rid of two dead wasps and one live one (where the hell do they come from, the evil beasts??...) so huge applause for me and my extraordinary courage. Not sure I have the guts to deal with another one if it turns up though. If it does, I will have to hide sobbing in a cupboard and wait for Lord H to come home. I also suspect that as the two dead wasps were young ones and the living one was very dopey that there's a nest somewhere about coming to its natural end. Thank the Lord.

Tonight, Lord H and I are off to the theatre to see Strictly Murder - which, whilst probably not being strong on laughs, does at least look as if it might take my mind off my writing disappointments, hurrah.

Today's nice things:

1. Poetry
2. Editing
3. Dead wasps
4. Theatre.

Anne Brooke - last woman standing, possibly
Painting from Life - art and death: what could be nicer?