Londonbound!; Northbound!; and Revision

I'm heading down to London today to take in a one-day (free!) conference on Reimagining the Brontes.  My supervisor and another Oxford English professor will be speaking, along with a number of other Bronte academics, some of whom I've read articles from in the past.  My lovely friend at LSE has kindly said I can bunk at her flat, which is great.

I'm also rather excited, as, I realized yesterday, this will be the first train trip in Britain I've tackled on my own and my first time propelling myself around the great metropolis by myself.  I've always been travelling with someone else when I've been in London previously.  I have this grand vision of myself roaming around the streets and parks solo.

I don't think I'll have a lot of time for roaming however, as the conference will take up almost all my Saturday.  But Tim's coming down on Sunday so we can do some sight-seeing.  There's a special John Martin exhibit on at the Tate Britain which I would like to see, as I know the Brontes were big fans of his apocalyptic paintings and engravings.

Also on the travel front, Tim and I have booked a little trip up north for our anniversary (our 10th!  Yikes!).  We're going to stay one night in York and three in Edinburgh.  We're hoping we can also pop into Durham to see the Cathedral and the Castle, but we'll see.  It will depend on train schedules and how much baggage we're hauling around.  I'm quite excited.  I really love both cities and Tim's never been to York.  Also, I will have fond literary memories of York, having now read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which begins there and involves magic being done to the Minster itself.

Also, on the revision front (and now this post and really jumping all over the place), my longhand third draft is now well over half done.  I'm getting very close to the exciting bits of the story, which may speed my pace up a bit.  However, except for when I was in a fog of writing and writing preparation the week last week, I've been really good about putting in my one hour a day of working on the book.  It's amazing how much you can get accomplished if you can just force yourself to put in some time every single day.