Pan Theodor Mundstock

So this novel, Fuks' first, had been the bane of my existence.

Not really, but it certainly was a non-starter.

I tried a hand at it in October 2005, after I got done transcribing Burner of Corpses. Got a few pages into it.

Didn't pick it up again until October 2006. Did maybe a page, couldn't even make my way out of the first chapter. I put it on my to-do list for 2007 back in January, after a whole lot of other stuff (The Way to the Promised Land, some reading, lots of transcribing.) Did the aforementioned stuff, and then stalled.

Wrote part of one sentence on August 17. Part of the same sentence on August 19. Finished the sentence on September 1st. Managed to hack my way into Chapter 3--twenty-four pages, all told--right before I moved.

I picked it up again a week and a half ago, figuring if I did a page and a half a day I might get done by the end of the calendar year. But then it became my job for four hours a day. Eighty pages done since last Monday--eighty pages in eleven days. Forty-seven of those since Monday morning. That's four days. I've broken my own record for productivity, I think, five or six times, and certainly all four days this work week, and am about to write through my second pen.

Seventy-eight pages to go. If I keep this pace up, I'll have done a quarter of everything I've thus far translated in three weeks' time.

Wow.