I fulfilled my goal of finishing my revision of The Jane Austen Project — a crucial reason for my silence here. That was back in September, or maybe October, depending on how one defines “finish” and “revision,” but now it is, it is, it is. No longer mine entirely, I am in the process of letting go of it. Nobody explains, in books that tell you how to write a novel, what a problem that really is.

And I can’t help wondering, as I reread Anna Karenina once again, did Tolstoy have this problem? Continue reading →