(no subject)

Past four hundred pages today, on the novel "River of the World". That's 135,000 words, give or take, which must be, oh, somewhere between eighty and ninety per cent of the whole. And I'm engaged in the Big Dramatic Climax on both sides of the river, so it should be a straight charge from here to the finish. I just wish I felt happier about it. It is of course traditional to lose confidence at some point and misdoubt the whole project - but I don't like this mad scramble to the end, I'm anxious about my editor's reaction, the book and its prequel both feel meaningless and inconsequential, and at the moment it feels like this is the way my career ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Given how we haven't found a UK publisher for this series, nor any publisher at all for anything else, I have this miserable sensation of having let the whole thing slip through my fingers like water...

God, I'm bright today. Sorry. Ignore me. The freelance path is strewn with bear-traps, and I guess I just trod in one.