Where am I? e-Etched City edit. Done, pretty much. Spent a lot of time thinking about things I could change and not changing most of them. Really just pottered in the garden with this, in the end. Mistakes here, a few commas and dialogue tags and overly repeated words/phrases there, a couple of other twiddles. Not much. Found that making a lot of changes to the little things resulted in something too much like changing the fabric the book’s cut out of.

Been going through Mad Ancestor one last time. Most of the stories need little or no work, but three need more. Despite not having done much on TEC, I think I might have built up some editing muscles by thinking about how I could change things. I learned the value of endurance while editing — of sitting there with the thing for a few hours, not taking too many breaks or switching to other jobs.

I’m getting up stupidly early to work on Mad Ancestor in order to have a guarantee of fairly constant quiet for as many consecutive hours as possible. Merry sound of children screaming like the damned outside at present. I am tired and a grumpy old woman today — wish they’d go indoors and have their dinners. Ears are jammed with Mack’s redoubtable silicone earplugs, which still don’t quite keep the shrieks out.

Been keeping up the running but not as much as I want to — only a couple of times a week, 2 or 3 km. I just can’t put in a good day’s work after exercising to the point of tiredness. Also, mornings are the best time for both writing and running — and until Ancestor is finished it’s gotta be writing. (I rarely have it in me to run *after* a good day’s work.)

Anyhow, it’s all going ok. Another week or two and it’ll all be behind me, and I will flop and loll and lie on the banana lounge we’ve bought for the roof.