Slow Progress

I spent the weekend building bookcases and revising Figured Dark into a final form to be submitted to the University of Arkansas Press. I'm happy with the manuscript--this is the best book I can write--I mean that in the sense that I've applied all of whatever skill I possess, and everything I have to give is down on paper.

Which is not to say that the manuscript is perfect, or that I will not write a better book.

Building the bookcases has been a two-month process, the hardest part of which was hauling in the several thousand books I've been storing in an outbuilding I've always meant to make over into a studio. I have perhaps five years of good eyesight left. If the books are going to be useful, they must be useful now.

So I have a newly reorganized place to work and a new poetry project underway. No, I haven't given up the idea of a novel. But I am working against time, and the worst part is not knowing what that timeline is.

The days are stacked against what we think we are.