writing-wise, i am putting one foot in front of another with the wolves revision. some days a couple thousand words, some days a couple hundred, some days nothing. dealing now with a lot of [find later] issues—naming some minor characters, finding locations that will become more relevant in malcolm but are alluded to now. and trying to create a solid outline, because i have this dread of revising talassio, revising and researching and polishing until it shines . . . and then discovering that some small thread of that book never gets picked up again.
there are a lot of threads.
reading-wise, i am stuck in rousseau’s julie, which i am grimly marching through. epistolary novels are not to my taste. i have tried before, i made it through clarissa, i made it through les liaisons dangereuses. but even the latter, though spicy and faster-paced, was difficult for me. something about the structure unsettles me; it’s more unease than frustration. i can’t put my finger on it . . . that i find both st. preux and julie irritating doesn’ t help.
but i care deeply about the last short story i wrote, and it references julie, so . . . alea iacta est? 😉