Writing is being physically difficult today. The arthritis or whatever it is in my elbow doesn't appreciate me trying to type. Nevertheless, between yesterday and today so far, I've gone over the first 118 pages of the manuscript for Blackheart Man, adding in new text and notes. I'm working towards a copy clean enough to submit to my editor. But for now, I'm off to take some aspirin and wait for it to kick in.

EDITED TO ADD:

3:51 p.m., same day; up to page 225 of 355 in the most recent edit of Blackheart Man. I'm incorporating handwritten text and notes I've made over the past few weeks. There's still so much to do to pull it together! Argh.

I'm also doing something that might have occurred sooner to someone whose brain has a less quirky relationship to dopamine and norepinephrine than mine does (part of the effect is that I find it more difficult to envision, create and maintain organizational systems, and yes, I'm quite aware that that doesn't make me especially unique, so please don't all rush to tell me that it's normal--cranky today, you say? Me? Cranky? Never happen); I'm rounding up the handwritten notes and scenes for Blackheart Man that I have lying around the house in notebooks, on bits of foolscap and the backs of envelopes. I'm putting them all with the current hard copy printout of the manuscript, which so far I haven't lost, though I've misplaced it a few times and I currently don't see the first three pages. I have to say that I find the resulting mass of written-upon paper kind of exciting to look at. There's definitely a novel's worth in there, frustratingly malleable though it is at this stage. It's proof that I've been working hard at this, even though I so often feel as though I could have been working harder.

Time for lunch now.