2022 Life Logs, Day 69: Writing Milestones
Date: Thursday, March 10, 2022
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 46, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
In February I finished writing book one of my proposed trilogy of The Voyage of Windbird. That was a huge milestone for me. Then I launched into tackling a rough edit and finished that on Monday of this week. Milestone number two. Next, I started a second edit as I incorporated the separate chapters into one document. I completed that this afternoon. Milestone number three. I am now writing a list of the conventions I used in the book and will send it out to three friends who have volunteered to be Beta readers. It will take them a bit as the first book consists of 17 chapters, a preface, and a prologue—166,605 words in total. Hopefully these readers will be able to help me cut extraneous passages getting the book down to a size people will read. There are many milestones to go as there are two more books to be written. And I have to find a way to get it published. But I am still energized and loving the process, so on goes the writing process.
My book club met via Zoom this morning to discuss The Personal Librarian, a historical fiction book about the life of Belle da Costa Green (Belle Marion Greener). In real life, she was the personal librarian for J. P. Morgan in 1906 and became the director of the library after his death in 1913. I have mentioned this book before when I finished reading it a few weeks ago. Belle was an amazing person. Accomplishing what she did in the first half of the twentieth century is amazing considering she was a woman and a woman of color. She passed as white for her entire life in order to follow her passion for rare books and transcripts. It is a book worth reading.
Weather. Ugh. Today was okay—no snow, no heavy winds, some sunshine, not warm, but not too cold. But it is going to get colder. Saturday, we get rain, and then overnight the temperature drops giving us a cold Sunday. Please. Can that be the end of really cold weather for this winter? I sure hope so.
