Imbolc New (Valentine) Moon
The images, each moved from their numbered folders into new folders named for the organizational scheme that moved me at the moment, have a new home. I’ve checked the prior machine for missing images, found a few and they’ll get added in tomorrow, but in essence the big image reorganization, self-inflicted, is over.
(Valkyrie (1908) by Stephan Sinding located in Churchill Park, Copenhagen, Denmark)
On March 1st I’m going to hit Missing with my third revision. I’m hoping this one puts me close to finished that I can begin shopping it to agents. I think it will, but until it’s done, I won’t know. Research for Loki’s Children goes well, too. I’m almost done with all the Eddas, then I’ll go back over them again, looking at my notes and underlining, taking pieces here and there that I’ll use.
With the image reorganization I’ve felt a bit off my game this last week, but I’m back now. Time to step up again.
Each day, though, I have (for the most part) finished a sentence of Jason and Medea. That doesn’t sound like a very ambitious rate, but by the time a sentence is done, which can be between 2 and 14 lines long, I’m ready to put away the Lewis and Short, the Wheeler and the Anderson, close Perseus and go upstairs. It’s a pace that, for now, allows me to work at an intense level, get work done steadily and yet allows enough time to do a quality job.
Been reading Civil Servant’s Notebook by Wang Xiaofang. Author of 13 novels, all about Chinese bureaucracy, this is his first translated into English. Published by Penguin. Of all the material I’ve read on China of late this one seems to have the most insight into contemporary China. Wang gives a satirical perspective on life inside municipal government, but he also strips the veins of a culture deep with history and short on ethical guidance. I’ve read elsewhere of a moral aimlessness that inflicts contemporary China, but I was never able to put my finger on it until reading Civil Servant’s Notebook. I don’t have it down here with me now, but tomorrow I’ll quote a few lines from it to show you what I mean.
