I'm looking at...

...98 handwritten manuscript pages. This began as some 12 pages typed by my slow but small and select typist. That's 12 out of the 75 he typed for me altogether in the first small batch. So I pulled out one 12-page piece and have now expanded that piece until it is now, as I said, 98 handwritten pages. Which, of course, now need to be typed. Obviously I can't keep working like this. That initial 12 typed pages was an early piece, just a sketch. Now it's definitely not a sketch. It's dreadful to have put in all that time on these things and then look at them and realize that I haven't actually said some of the things I thought I said. So the rewrite of the last couple months (remember I'm working full time and commuting more than two hours a day and walking the dogs and trying to keep you all entertained here and occasionally -- very occasionally -- indulging in some small amusement) has been filling all these little holes that I could only see and fix when I got it typed.

Not everything I've written will get this treatment, mercifully. I'm hoping that the things that I did later -- like last fall and earlier this year -- are a little more fully written.

But the 98 pages represent one completed piece. I expect it will be a little shorter after it's typed as there is some crossing out and, I hope I'll find some stuff that I won't mind cutting. But even at, say, 75 pages it is an awkward length.

This one is about obeah, power, status, propriety, Jane Eyre, and Jean Rhys. And one pervert. See how silly that sounds?

If I have my typist do it it will take forever, and I've got some other things for him to work on so now I'm thinking I'll just type it myself. I'll have to see how many pages I can manage in a day. I'd like to say 10.

Anyway this is in case you were wondering what I've been doing.