Realized, dumb me to take so long to get to it, that I slide over to Substack because I want to write something and publish it! Hacking through notes and editing and organizing does not have the satisfaction of that. And The Great Good Place is slogging, a lot of the time. But I get satisfaction when a piece takes shape and I now need to find that lilt (a great word, thanks to Joli Jensen for using it) as I finish the book. It’s there to be found. I should add that the slog is not the subject, but the fact that I have gathered so many notes and so much material to sift through. And I’ve struggled with sequencing the chapters in a way that will be most helpful to the most readers.
Writing about Valerie Eliot will be a slog, too, part of the time, for the same reason. But I’m hoping to learn something about getting all the piles of notes into good order before diving in. One thing I have in mind is the “murder case book” I read about in detective novels: all the evidence and interviews gathered chronologically. Definitely a fit for the investigation Valerie’s life has demanded!