Finished (sort of)

Yesterday, rather to my surprise, I finished my book on church monuments etc. Well, I say 'finished', but of course there is much more to be done: rereading, revision and correction, checking, some rewriting – and then the challenging business of putting it all together as a book, with the pictures (there are a lot of them) in the right places, and then finally publishing it. I gave myself two years to do the writing, and I've barely overrun that deadline. A few more months and the thing will be actually finished and out in the world, in good time for my 70th birthday (and Christmas, ho ho). That's a long gestation for a book of barely 60,000 words, but I don't have the stamina for long stretches of intensive writing – and besides, I had all those churches to visit. It's been fun.