I had lovely good news last night, I've been writing madly all weekend even throughout the worst of the illness (somehow flus don't seem to affect the writing side of my brain, despite my general lack of coherency or energy in any other aspect of life while sick), and now...I'm completely stymied. I've set myself a deadline of a week to do one last (for now, anyway) round of rewrites on Masks & Shadows. (Mostly figuring out whether I like the changes I made last time, particularly to the last eighty pages.) So here are the things I've done instead (as well as popping paracetemol for cold/flu symptoms):

1) Read blogs. (I enjoyed Jennifer Weiner's distinctly snarky entries of April 24th and 25th very much.)
2) Re-read the Constantinople and Adrianople sections of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters, as research for both Thief of Souls and my thesis.
3) Made several small wording changes to Chapter Six of Thief of Souls, which I wrote over the weekend, bringing the current word count up to about 18,000 words.
4) Re-read Chapter One of Marrying a Demon and Other Terrible Mistakes, and decided that I still like it.
5) ----oh, never mind. I could keep going for a long, long time! Suffice it to say that I've been procrastinating. A Lot.

I've decided that the fact it's been raining today, after five days of beautifully sunny weather, is definitely related to my lethargy.

It was a nice weekend, though, despite being ill. We watched Stage Beauty, which is my favorite historical movie I've seen in a long time--funny, smart, dark, and sweet. (And historical 'period' movies are my favorite kind of movie in the world!) We sat in a nearby field and basked in the sunlight. We did a lot of recuperative resting.

And now I'm feeling tired and sick again so I'm heading back to the couch. Sigh.

Must summon more energy when I get up again...