Justice has not anything to show more fair

From a book on the history of punishment and torture, speaking of those offences that carried the death penalty in Britain at the end of the 18th century, "even the lowly offence of writing on Westminster Bridge was a capital crime."

Wordsworth seems to have got away with it, a bare two years later...

Who knows, baby? Maybe this time...

I am told that the copy-edited manuscript of the latest book is on its way, and should reach me by the end of the week.

Bizarrely, this could be good news.

I've finished rewrites on the short story for Geoff, yay, and he likes them, double-yay; I've just started going through Rotten Row for the umpty-millionth time, just one last skim before it goes off to my agent; I have nothing else imperative to do.

So. CEM arrives, and I work through it next week, send it back again before the weekend. Over the weekend, I hang out with friends and drink much wine; and then Monday morning is June 1st, when I intend to start vol 3.

For which I shall be primed and ready, having just read my way through vol 2 one more time.

And, I shall be sick to death of rewrites and edits and umpty-millionth drafts, and mad keen to get back to proper hack-it-from-the-wordface writing.

Well, it sounds like a plan...

There's a reason they call it a mess

Ciabatta dough is in the oven, looking good; carrot-and-coriander-but-mostly-coriander soup is on the stove and tasting yummy.

Ciabatta dough is also on my shirt, on my skin, on my trousers. Soup is also on the kitchen counter, on the kettle, on the coffee-grinder, on the floor...

I am a mucky cook; I spill things as I work. Also, I do not learn even from anticipated errors. As I ladled soup-in-the-rough into the blender for the first batch, I was wondering whether I had put in too much and it would all spurt boilingly out of the top.

Yup.

So I cleaned the kettle, the coffee-grinder, the counter; and filled the blender for a second batch, thinking "Don't do that again."

And, yup. Did it again.

*goes to clean stuff before lunch*

Autonomic nervousness

I have long since got used to the fact that every time I approach the Lit & Phil - and I do mean every time - I reach into my back pocket for my keys. Mostly these days I don't actually take them out, but the reaching happens. Sometimes I remind myself aloud, "No, Chaz, you don't actually live here, this place is not your home."

I'm slightly more concerned that after a morning in the Silence Room scribbling in ink on a manuscript, I got up to fetch another cup of coffee - and caught myself looking around for the keyboard that must surely be there somewhere, so that I could press ctrl-S and save my work.

Dreamwidth invite codes

I have a couple more invite codes, if anyone wants one...