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Me to my agent upon sending the outline over to her: "Of course, I have no reasonable time in the near future to actually write this. But when has that ever stopped me before. Probably I will write it at an unreasonable time."

Obviously I come up with an entire plot for a book – like, an actual entire plot, for a book my agent is enthusiastic about and which might in the right light be almost marketable – right at a moment when I am genuinely, for real, completely unable to write it (about to be without a computer or any free time for two solid weeks).

THANKS BRAIN

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Obviously I come up with an entire plot for a book – like, an actual entire plot, for a book my agent is enthusiastic about and which might in the right light be almost marketable – right at a moment when I am genuinely, for real, completely unable to write it (about to be without a computer or any free time for two solid weeks).

THANKS BRAIN

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TAWB edits submitted to Gollancz and sent to my beta reader ✔️ Publicity questionnaire submitted to Erewhon ✔️ TWAHK reader guide questions submitted to Erewhon ✔️

Okay. I think when it comes to Book Stuff that that's all of my deadlines met and I am potentially off the hook until I get back from the Gaeltacht, which gives me a bit more time to cram before I go...

Here's hoping there's nothing else I forgot completely about (like the reader questions and publicity questionnaire, WHOOPS).

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Overall since finishing this draft, I've managed to cut almost two thousand words from it (making it less than 20k longer than the previous draft, rather than closer to 22k), but the really exciting thing is that currently Blodeuedd and Gwydion narrate an exactly equal portion of the book:

So I'm going to stop trying to cut things there, because that seems as good a place as any for now. Further cuts can happen in line edits.

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It's now 500 words shorter than it was before I started adding things, which is excellent news. I wonder if I can cut another 500 before I send it to my editor tomorrow. (Probably not, in a heatwave, but I can try.)

Currently trying to add in a small subplot / running thread to this book without adding any words to the total wordcount. We're on a One In, One Out word system over here. Ideally One In, Five Out, but I'll take what I can get. It's actually not going as badly as I feared -- I've more or less added everything that needed adding, and it's 100 words shorter than it was when I started, which is nice.

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Saw my first glimpse of the special US edition of TWAHK today 👀 It's pretty cool. Looking forward to being able to show you.

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One of my hobbies when translating is coming up with deeply stupid adjectives to represent whatever noun this guy has decided to whack an adjectival ending onto. Today: swordly. Adverb form: swordishly.

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A very crucial part of editing The Animals We Became is finding the most viscerally uncomfortable moments for Blodeuedd to refer to Gwydion as "my mother" -- or, even worse, "our mother".

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Basically all of the (22k) words I've gained in this draft have been because my past self did not pay any attention to the political dimension of the book, but once I actually started caring about sovereignty as a theme, I was forced to reckon with the fact that, yeah, there probably are consequences to killing your neighbouring lord who is also the king's nephew and heir, aren't there.

So, anyway, now we're trying to deal with the political fallout of what is basically a coup in as few words as possible.

Currently trying to add in a small subplot / running thread to this book without adding any words to the total wordcount. We're on a One In, One Out word system over here. Ideally One In, Five Out, but I'll take what I can get. It's actually not going as badly as I feared -- I've more or less added everything that needed adding, and it's 100 words shorter than it was when I started, which is nice.

[finnlongman]

Currently trying to add in a small subplot / running thread to this book without adding any words to the total wordcount. We're on a One In, One Out word system over here. Ideally One In, Five Out, but I'll take what I can get. It's actually not going as badly as I feared -- I've more or less added everything that needed adding, and it's 100 words shorter than it was when I started, which is nice.

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See also: Tadhg / Timothy; Cú Choigríche / Peregrine...

One reason it can be really hard to keep track of people in historical sources is the sheer variation in forms of their name, especially when they have both Gaelic forms and Anglicised forms. A Seán/John combo wouldn't throw me off, but Uilliog/Alexander? Buddy. Come on. How was anyone meant to guess that one to know what to look you up under

(I assume he's treating Uilliog as basically Alec, but it seems like this is non-standard. If it wasn't for the fact that he signs both names in the same text in the same manuscript, a few pages apart from each other, I would not have clocked that that was the same scribe.)

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One reason it can be really hard to keep track of people in historical sources is the sheer variation in forms of their name, especially when they have both Gaelic forms and Anglicised forms. A Seán/John combo wouldn't throw me off, but Uilliog/Alexander? Buddy. Come on. How was anyone meant to guess that one to know what to look you up under

(I assume he's treating Uilliog as basically Alec, but it seems like this is non-standard. If it wasn't for the fact that he signs both names in the same text in the same manuscript, a few pages apart from each other, I would not have clocked that that was the same scribe.)

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Book returned. Three other books returned at the same time, as part of my ongoing quest to return as many of my library books as I can before I go to Donegal (I am significantly behind where I hoped I'd be on this quest; I've only managed five books overall so far). May whoever recalled it have joy of it.

I have a book currently on loan from the University Library. It was published in 2004 and since then has been borrowed five times. I am the fifth. The fourth was in February 2017.

I have had it for... a few months, perhaps, but not a large number of them.

Somebody has, inevitably, recalled it.

Eight years! Eight years nobody else wanted it and now they want it while I've got it! Every time.

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Apropos friendship studies and philosophy, do you know/have you read A.C. Grayling's Friendship? I realize the answer is probably yes.

I know of it, vaguely; I used to work in the philosophy library, which is actually kind of how I ended up doing a PhD on friendship in the first place, so I have a moderately broad familiarity with names and titles of philosophy and philosophy-adjacent books/authors, without having read huge numbers of them. It's amazing what you pick up while shelving! I haven't read that one (yet) (who knows, that may change).

A lot of the time when I read philosophical work on friendship, it's because I'm following up on interpretations of a specific text (often Aelred, Augustine, or Cicero at this point), so tends to be quite narrow and specific in scope. This is partly because the Irish texts, for the most part, do not appear to be engaging with Classically-derived philosophical theories of friendship, so while I needed to read enough about them to determine this, they're to some extent a bit of a sidetrack. And partly because there is just so much out there that once you start, it can be a fairly infinite rabbithole!

(If wordcount allows, there will be a section in my thesis that's like, "And here's what they're not doing..." but it's the most likely section to get yeeted if length starts to be a problem, since talking about what they are doing is more interesting and productive.)

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This bit I understand (I think) and, like, I said, it is Compelling To Me. Would ponder.

‘My being, like that of any other entity, is ineluctably temporal: I exist as the successive realisation of potentiality, and my existing now is equivalently a coming to be of what I can be, and a perishing of what until now I was. Over this structure I can exercise no choice, for that is what it is to be in time. But I can navigate through this sea of possibility: this is why the question of being is both necessary and possible. What am I to be? But, unless my answer to this question is to be merely one arbitrary spin of the roulette-wheel after another, my choice must intend who I can be and not just what I can be. There “is” an as yet unrealised I, which I can be but am not, and which it would be best for me to be; all other selves, or realisations of myself which I can become, being less than this, that is, less good, than this. And the less good is the more-or-less evil, and is false in that it is false to what I can-be.’

Thomas A.F. Kelly, 'Towards an Ontology of Love', in Amor amicitiae: On the Love that is Friendship. Essays in Medieval Thought and Beyond in Honor of the Rev. Professor James McEvoy, p. 215

I was not prepared to be dealing with Heidegger before lunchtime on a Monday.

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#i am emphatically Not A Philosopher #however. much of friendship studies is within philosophy #'as we all know...' they will begin optimistically (I do not know) (I have not read Heidegger)

The worst part is that every time I have to read philosophy I become increasingly convinced that there's a universe where I did go in that direction. Much of it is greatly compelling to me! And I also do think I have the kind of brain that likes to pull apart concepts and meanings until the fundamental building blocks of both language and human being fall apart and have to be reconstructed. I just chose to channel that into literature instead. But I'm certain that if multiverse theory is real, then there is a world where I have not only read Heidegger but done so enough times to understand what this guy's on about.

I was not prepared to be dealing with Heidegger before lunchtime on a Monday.

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It's now a day overdue. I've finished reading it and I'm halfway through typing up my notes, but this means I'm going to have to cycle to the library in the 27°c heat this afternoon to return it. Woe and anguish, etc.

I have a book currently on loan from the University Library. It was published in 2004 and since then has been borrowed five times. I am the fifth. The fourth was in February 2017.

I have had it for... a few months, perhaps, but not a large number of them.

Somebody has, inevitably, recalled it.

Eight years! Eight years nobody else wanted it and now they want it while I've got it! Every time.