Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Synopses are helpful

I've been working my ass off the last few days but yesterday the shipment got off and is en route to its new home -- and it took me all day, today, to recuperate. I'm finding even just packing the books and humping the boxes half as much as I used to is wearing me out twice as fast.

This little picture shows how they looked on the base of a D-Container, before I finished putting the container walls around them. I packed every one of those brown boxes; 58 of them; 70 boxes, total, into 3 containers.

Tomorrow I'm off to LA to do 20-25 cartons, but in larger boxes and with more care, since they are traveling outside the US. After that, another 4-5 cartons then it's off to home, and a week to rebuilt my strength.

But...this evening I did manage to do some work on APoS and the summary of chapters for New World For Old. Saw some spots where I could clarify aspects of the book, itself, and work in more details...not just in this part of the story but also in Derry. The more I work with Brendan and his memories of his time there, the more I see how to add cross-references to the story.

Something else that's helping me is reading a book called Milkman, by Anna Burns. Just not in the usual way. I do not like the book. Apparently it's about a young woman in Belfast who's suddenly being stalked by a member of a paramilitary for no reason and hates how the gossips have decided she's his girlfriend and probably sleeping with him.

I was reading it to get a clearer vision of the society of the time...but OMG, is it tedious. I got to page 25 and not one character has a name, yet, not even the main one. They're referred to as maybe-boyfriend and third sister and Milkman and the like. So I'm finding it damned hard to empathize with her.  Yet it won the Man Booker Prize in 2018.

I'm probably being unkind and demanding. After all, 25 pages isn't much to go on and I normally give a book till page 100 before I quit, so I'll probably keep going. But it's like an assignment, now, not a pleasure.

But at least I can stop worrying if my book will be tedious or surface; this thing is as deep as skim milk spilled on a kitchen counter.

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