Oof, I worked hard this weekend. I read my novel -- the whole shebang -- and made lots of notes to correct continuity errors, seed in some foreshadowing, keep eye colors consistent, etc. I wrote three new scenes (none of them were long, but all were absolutely crucial). I typed in several thousand handwritten words, revising them on the fly. I keyed in all the corrections. Everything took forever. But, as a consequence, the first-and-a-halfth draft my novel, The Light of a Better World, is now really truly done. I sent it to a few first readers, and uploaded it for the workshop, and sent it to my agent. They've all got a couple of months to tell me everything that's wrong with it, and in the meantime? I'm not going to think about it at all. Instead, I'll do layout on chapbooks and Flytrap, and write stories. Stories! Things I can finish in just a few sittings! Which means soon I'll have more than two stories in circulation! Whoo!

I love writing novels, but it'll be nice to move on to shorter work for a little while.

Heather and I went out last night and had drinks with Susan and Matt and Meghan and other people. Mmm, sweet booze, good conversation, very fun. Imagine, Heather and I, actually out until midnight. It's almost like being young again!

Today we went to a newish café just a few blocks down the street. It's a nice place! Bottomless cups of good coffee for under two bucks (two bucks is too much to pay for a cup of coffee... but it's not too much to pay for four cups of coffee!). Looks like potentially good food. Free wireless. Decent music, decent art, fairly comfortable seating. Best of all, it has non-ridiculous hours (most of the cafés we like in our neighborhood close at, like, 6 p.m.). So I may have a place to go on evenings and weekends, and to spend my days off in, when I get stir crazy at home, as I inevitably do.

Wow. Having this novel done ("done"), knowing I don't have to think about it again for weeks and weeks and weeks, is so liberating. I feel like all these vistas are opening up before me. I can't decide what story to work on first. I guess I'll finish the Mr. Li story I started last December, and see where I want to go from there. Whee!