Diary of Writing Italy’s Sorrow

March 12, 2007
Three weeks to go until hand in!  And I think I’m just about going to do it as long as I keep tightly to the remaining chapter outlines I’ve plotted out.  It’s all making for long days and interrupting our weekends, but at last I’m beginning to feel as though there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  I’m currently over 150,000 words, so it’s going to be around the 180,000 mark – more than I’d originally intended, but not much more.  Furthermore, I’ve finished most of the really big events, including the massacre on Monte Sole.  Franz Maassen is now part of the action – I’d forgotten how good his interview and memoirs are.  Re-reading them, his descriptions of coming under heavy Allied artillery fire are amazing.  I’ve also been written up Norman Lewis’s view of Southern Italy a year after ‘liberation’.  I’m not drawing any parallels with Iraq, but hopefully they will be completely obvious.  In fact, the similarities – the lack of post-war plan, the dissolution of society etc etc – are chilling.