Reading the pond novel

Most of this week was lost to sickness, but I did make it to Morning Writing Club each morning, even if my brain was syrup once I was there. The routine matters, I tell myself! In any case, feeling better now and back to work.

This week in writing

The pond novel is getting to that unwieldy stage where what’s been written is too much to keep in my head and so I start getting the regular impulse to print the thing and read it through.

Yesterday, I did just that, and it took many hours to read because the manuscript is basically the length of a short book now. I read the first half at Der Pioneer, sitting in the sunshiney front window. I read more in the quiet garden of our building while waiting for the laundry, and I finished it when I woke up this morning.

I was hoping that some plot conundrums would become immediately clear to me, but they did not. A few new ideas presented themselves, but mostly I just circled in purple ink where all the many plot holes are.

This week in reading

I started Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation on audio, and I started Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind in print. I’m still reading Life with Picasso, a handful of pages a week. I’m waiting for something to grab me the way my last couple of reads did, something plotty that will help my brain figure out the pond novel. Suggestions welcome!