in the aftermath of Sandy, thoughts on a quiet three-book day

In the stunning aftermath of Sandy, my heart is with those who have lost so much, my wonder is at the power of sea and storm.  I hear the buzz of saws teething into the trees that have fallen nearby, the generator down the street, the school buses returning to duty.

But I feel silent inside.

Today I felt the pressing need to get things done.  To finally read through Handling the Truth one last time and to return it to Gotham.  This, now, is it.  No more changes.  No more second guessing myself.

I wanted, too, to finalize Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent—to knock away the unpoetic repetitions I'd somehow managed to introduce in early pages, to erase still-extant grammatical mistakes, to fix things I should have seen before.   I have no idea how much I'm still not seeing. I've no idea why I'm not smarter, sooner.  But that book, too, is now done.  Many thanks to Elizabeth Parks for her book design, and to my husband, for his illustrations.

In the midst of this, Monica Kulling sent me word of this beautiful review of Small Damages over on Sal's Fiction Addiction. A reminder, among other things, that we do finally "finish" books, or, at least, we grow capable of living with them in bound form.

I still find that hard to do, after all these years, but there are more important things in this terrifying, wonderful world.