Understanding Thomas Carlyle being tired of his own books

As I've mentioned on this blog before—many times, actually—I'm a fan of the writing of Thomas Carlyle, especially his letters. Two themes come through these over and over. One, despite his writing thousands of letters, he thought himself a delinquent correspondent and apologized in seemingly every letter about how slow he was in responding. He must have learned more ways of saying "sorry I didn't reply sooner" than any other writer.

Second, Carlyle frequently writes how tired he is of working on his own books. It seems to have been that way on every one of them. Sometimes it began at the research phase, sometimes partly through the writing, but always by the time he get to checking galley proofs. Here's a sample.

In fact you must know, Sir, that one month is going to satisfy me here: the people, particularly the Lady, seem still more tired of the place than I am; they are going down to Edinr about the first of Feby to stay there for a month—meaning to return again, and then set out for London in April. I do not return. Meister must begin printing whenever I arrive, and I must push it thro' as fast as possible. Woe to this Schiller! I have absolutely taken up a horror at it. Would you believe that I but began it three nights ago, and am not yet half thro' the first copy of it. My mind absolutely will not fasten on it...

Meister refers to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, which Carlyle translated to English and published. "This Schiller" refers to the Schiller's Life and Writings, the work Carlyle was currently engaged with. However, this wasn't a book from scratch. Rather, it was taking his own articles on Schiller and his writing that had already appeared in The London Magazine and reworking them a little, with some expansions, and putting them in book form. In other words, he was mainly editing them. And three days into the process he was already tired of it.

As I say, Carlyle seems to have felt that was on each book—at least so far as my reading of his letters can detect. I find that I'm a little like that too. On Thursday last I finished revision three of my current novel, originally titled China Tour but finally titled Operation Lotus Sunday. I say it was finished because I added the last scene to it, a scene suggested by my prior readings. On Friday I went through my wife's suggested edits, made decisions on each, and added them to my copy. On Saturday I typed them all, officially declaring Rev 3 as done and ready for printing.

Why print it? Because I had enough changes from Rev 2 to Rev 3 that I think I need to read it one more time, reading it quickly, as a reader hopefully would, and see if the story really hangs together well, and if there's any repetition I haven't noticed before. In truth, I'm almost tired of reading it. I think I can get through it in two days of dedicated reading. But I've read it through about three times already. I don't know that I particularly want to read it a fourth time, at least not right now.

But read it I must, and hope that my mind will fasten on it. I'll start that either tonight or tomorrow, and see where it takes me.

When You Have Nothing to Say...

...say nothing.

That's how I've been the last few days. I spent Thursday through Sunday in Oklahoma City, helping Lynda babysit our grandsons while their dad and mom were at ministers and mates retreat. Lynda had been there for two weeks already, and I joined the party. The babysitting went very well. I hadn't seen the boys since May. Ephraim is four, and he remembered me with no problem. Ezra is just 1 1/2, and I'm not sure he remembered me. But he and I had a great time. I wound up putting him to bed all three nights and for a couple of naps. Obviously during this time I wasn't concerned with writing or developing ideas, for this blog of for anything. What limited reading I did was in some Civil War documents.

I drove home Sunday afternoon/evening, arriving at 7:00 p.m., my mind fully immersed in radio football coverage. I had a scheduled blog post for Sunday, so I knew I didn't need to write anything here until Tuesday. I mainly read and rested in the quiet house Sunday evening.

Back at work Monday, I wasn't as productive as I could be. My concentration was off. I wasn't sure why. At home Monday evening I suddenly and quickly developed a cold. Normally these things come on me slowly, over a period of about three days. This one happened in three hours. It wasn't allergies. So being sub par, I did less that evening than I hoped for. I worked on my current novel, China Tour, writing about 1,000 words in the next chapter, but didn't even think of this or my other blog.

Then yesterday I came to work. I felt amazingly good compared to Monday. The cold, it seemed, might be a very mild one that I got over quickly. I functioned reasonably well at work on Tuesday. On the noon hour I picked up more or less where I was with the novel and added 900 words. Of course, that meant I had it in two files on two different computers, with a merge in the future. But at least I felt good during the day and into the evening. I worked some more on the book in the evening, adding another 500+ words to the scene I wrote at work, thus making for three discontinuous blocks of text waiting to be merged. But, I felt no motivation to blog.

So here it is Wednesday morning. I'm at work, in my own quiet time before I start the work day. I'm feeling a little worse today, so maybe the cold isn't as mild as I first thought. We'll see if some daytime cold pills do the trick. I'll probably leave the office a bit early, go home and make a big pot of chicken soup, for me and for Lynda's return tonight.

But I still have nothing to say on this blog. No ideas have come, except to do this play-by-play of the last seven days. China Tour is almost at 5,000 words, and seems to be coming together well, though I'm moving along in scenes with less words than I anticipated. I'll give more details of that on my other blog. Meanwhile, I still can't think of anything to write for this blog. My last post, on politics, resulted in some interest, so maybe I'll see if I can develop a pre-election post or two. Otherwise, I need to develop some blog ideas.