I'm still very tired, but that's about what I expected at this stage. The best thing I can report is that nothing unusual is happening. I am 'just' tired. I don't appear to be about to lose my sight or my mind or my sense of balance. I'm not being ironic when I say that, right now, I'm pleased.
Despite being tired, I've been working away at Hild. I'm pleased to report that I now have 700 pages: 145,000 words. My guess is I have at least 100 pages to go before I get to the end of this draft. But that's the exciting thing about first drafts: I honestly don't know. But I'm imagining some big scenes at the moment and couldn't happier if I'd been dipped in chocolate. (Or if, y'know, someone cured MS. Or if I won the lottery. Or if Salma Hayek walked through the door and her clothes fell off. Or--well, okay, there are always ways to feel more smug about life. But this sincerely doesn't suck.)
One major annoyance stemming from being so tired is that I might not get to carve a pumpkin this year. I enjoy doing that. I also enjoy munching up all the cute chocolate thingies that Kelley buys to for trick-or-treaters. (She usually ends up making two or three runs to the store. I smile guiltily and promise not to eat the most recent batch; I lie.)
So that's the situation in our house today: Hild grows, so does my waistline, and I'm hoarding my energy. The weather is wild: wind stripping the leave and whirling them up into a sky the colour of tin and lead, squirrels getting bowled along the lawn like little fuzzy eight-balls. All just the way it should be in autumn.
