10) Remember that he writes mysteries, even when he's not writing mysteries.

Neil Gaiman offers nine suggestions on how to read Gene Wolfe in this month's F&SF. (Michael Swanwick and Michael Andre-Driussi have things to say, too.)

What I have to say about Gene Wolfe starts with these words, and goes on for thousands more: every moment in his stories is real, is a real moment, self-contained and allowed to unfold. It's not a moment on the way to another moment, or filling in something missing from the moment that just happened; it is its own moment, and you can cup it in your hands and let it spin for you. When you set it down (if you ever do), the next moment is there waiting to be picked up.

I sit at his stumpy feet, and I think I always will.

3!

I finished chapter three tonight, and opened the old version of The Slow Palace to see how my progress is stacking up against it. It was written in WordPerfect, so Classic mode had to boot up first. The little word count box opened, and over the opening bars of Nick Cave's Messiah Ward a computer voice, mysteriously, began reading it aloud:

"Alert characters words lines sentences paragraphs pages average word length average words slash sentence maximum words slash sentence."

I closed the window and re-opened it. The voice repeated its spiel, with one change:

"It's not my fault characters words lines sentences paragraphs pages average word length average words slash sentence maximum words slash sentence."

The words "It's not my fault" do not appear anywhere in the text.

I think the old draft is dead and haunting my machine.

The point here, though, is that I finished chapter three tonight. These are the sample chapters I will send to a publisher or agent, once the rest is finished. I'm on page 60, with about 16,500 words written. The old version had about 60,000 words in it, but the same ground I've covered so far in the new draft used 27,500 of them. That's two pieces of good news: I'm being more efficient this time, and I'm farther along than I thought.

Something seems to be working. I've been writing six days a week, an hour and a half to two hours a night. I wrote 28 pages in the last 29 days. Now I have to decide if I want to take this opportunity to go back and edit, or if I should plow ahead and hope everything behind me is stable. Going back risks my momentum, but would leave me with something I could show adfamiliares; plunging forward is jolly accomplishment, but the more untightened screws I leave behind the more nervous I get.

Anyway: chapter 3 finished, lunar eclipse pictures taken, and an apple crisp baked. Not bad for a Saturday's work.