Wandering is what I’ve taken up as my task for today. I needed some time away from the writing and noticed the power was out this morning, so I just got out of the house early and wandered down the hill. I ended up walking through the area where a lot of Tibetan families live, and saw the funniest game of cricket beng played by a bunch of local boys, including a teenaged monk in his monastic robes.

I think I’m going to try to get down the hill into Dharamsala proper and get me one of those funny metal lunchpails I see all the locals carrying around. They’re cool and I think they’d suit my kimchi chigae just fine back in Korea. After that, I think it’ll be dark, so I’ll head back to McLeod Ganj for dinner and maybe a beer if I run into anyone I know, and then I’ll head back to the house, fill up the sawdust burner, and get back to writing.

Oh, and by the way: I found how to prevent the sawdust burner from leaking smoke into the house! It needed a cleaning, it looked like it might ot have been cleaned since the summer, so I detached it from the chimney pipe, carried it outside, and then cleaned it out with a rag and a big stick, singing that chimney-sweep song from Mary Poppins to myself. You remember the song, right?

I have two major major sections left to go, plus a handful of shorter scenes that I need to write, and my novel will be done! I am thinking I’ll actually manage to get most of that done before I go, though of course it’ll all need rewriting in a few months, and the opening section will need rewriting far sooner than that—before I put it aside and let it ferment… Still, I think the forecast is good for me finishing sooner, rather than later. Which is nice. And the next project, as I say, has already begun to brew. But I’ll let that brew for a while: I have a few collections of poetry to finish and polish respectively, and some serious research to get done, before I’ll be ready to tackle the next long-fiction project.

Okay, it’s a little after 4pm and the sun’s usually down by 6 or 6:30, so it’s definitely time for me to go! Later!