There is nothing like finishing the rough draft of a novel. Well, maybe there is...Nine and half months of pregnancy, followed by labor and delivery and a healthy baby- that's a fair comparison.
If writing a novel is like giving birth then revisions are like...trying to drop the 48 pounds that wasn't baby after all.
It's a long, arduous process.
Usually I slough off and rush through it. I'm too ADD to focus on the nit-picky details. I hate revisions!
Until this book.
I finished the draft last week, sat on it and then, couldn't stop myself from taking it back out five days later so I could tinker with it.
I've lost days now tinkering- searching for flaws, correcting little errors, revising the ending so that it is a more appropriate reversal of the book's beginning.
I know, for maybe the first time in my life, what the theme is in this book. I can pick out the unconscious symbolism.
And today, for the first time, I closed the lid on the laptop and thought "I like this book. I really like it."
Usually I don't even want to look at something I've written. It embarrasses me. But Eddie and Marion...(for now temporarily titled "Flight Risk,") I like it. I like reading it. What a concept.
Eddie and Marion- the kid and the groupie- have been haunting me since March. They wouldn't let go until I'd written down their stories. This book doesn't even have a home. No contract. No deadline. No promise of money. There are lots of details to be attended to...but for now...I have a new baby and I love her.
Maybe I'll post the beginning tomorrow.
In the meantime...IT'S RAINING!!!! Even up at the cabin where the spring ran dry, it is raining!! Yippee! Life is good and I have not been a pussy. Not once.
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