I've spent the day cleaning the professor's house, packing my things up and moving them back to my apartment, running errands in general, and now I'm all tuckered out, waiting for my second wind. I'll miss this house, with all its plants and African masks and Irish paraphenilia. I'll miss the space it gave me to work in for a few months. And I got a lot of work done. More than I'd even realized until this morning, when I printed out a short story collection and my novel-in-progress to send to an agent. The collection is seventy-thousand words, and so is the novel-in-progress. I had about six hundred pages in front of me, and I realized I'd actually accomplished a few things in the past few years. I guess I hadn't realized it all added up to something.

The novel is about two-thirds done. I've started the third and last section of it finally. Kind of scary to be in the last part of it, especially since it will be the most difficult section to write in many ways for me, both emotionally and imaginatively. But I'll keep at it till it's finished, hopefully some time in the next few months.

School starts next Monday and I'll be teaching three classes. Money, thankfully, will begin to come to me again at the end of next month, and I will no longer be emptying my savings and living on credit. Bleah! But I keep telling myself it was worth it, in order to write the two hundred pages I wrote this summer. I keep wishing the book was smaller and more elegant, so that I could selfishly be done with it, but it's turned into something a bit more epic and rollicking, and it feels right, the direction it's going, so I have to trust that instinct, rather than trying to make it something it isn't. I still feel weird, writing this much. I've always been suspicious of books longer than three hundred pages, and here I am writing one of those books I've always been suspicious of. Hmmph.

Hopefully my progress won't be slowed too too much by going back to teaching next week. I've been enjoying being with the book all summer, with not many distractions other than friends and family and loved ones, etc. which are good distractions.

I'm off to do more cleaning. Everyone have a good end of summer!