You get me closer to God
Another hurdle has been passed…
Well, first of all, I should explain what has happened since my last utterings here.
Basically, I have been unable to do much aside from the book.
When I went to Weight Watchers, I was panning for gold in old drafts with my highlighter and my flags. Afterward, at Nirvana for dinner, I place my order, and then whip out the draft. On my way home, I figure, why not?, and stop at a cafe to finish up that draft out in public.
I think I’m going home to unwind, but it seems to not be happening, so I stay awake until nearly 4 a.m. tearing through the old drafts. Then, I’m up at 7 a.m., and right back in.
And, it isn’t drudgery. I am fully engaged.
My previous "system," for lack of a better term to call my lack of a system, means I have probably read about 6-7 drafts of the novel in the past 48ish hours? I will admit my timeline may be off since my sleep schedule is. In any event, I read the same material over and over and over and over again…
The upside is I have a new appreciation for how far this novel has come. The first draft, which is this horrible 50ish page thing, is barely an idea. If anything, it regresses from the short story. But there are kernels in there that I know are going in a good direction.
Funny story, I thought the first draft WAS the Thailand draft, because I always remembered Thailand as a small draft. So, I’m reading this thing and I am thinking that I must have been completely out of my mind to have written this thing and decided it was worth getting out of my job and doing this a go full-time. I would have had to have been competely mental to do such a thing. Of course, when I go through the file cabinet here, I find another thing marked Thailand draft and, when I finally read that, it clearly is the turning point, and a good time to have decided to quit the job after all.
Here’s another shocking thing: I’m not sick of this book. This process has really shown me how much progress has been made, and I can’t wait to run it through the end of this draft now.
Just as with the weight loss, it is so easy to get fixated on what isn’t working, how much is left to do, that you lose sight of how far things have come, how much has gone right with it, etc.
So, here is where everything is at:
- All drafts, fragments, notes, etc. have been read and all the gold is pasted into a separate Word document
- That document will need to be ordered appropriately tomorrow, based on the outline, and pasted at the end of each appropriate chapter for possible inclusion
- A timeline needs to be created for when everything happens in the novel (so characters don’t seem to lose 60 pounds in two and a half months or anything)
And then…
When all that is done, perhaps as early as tomorrow… I get to start sculpting the text.
I’m really stoked about how all this has been going lately. And, I just know it isn’t a short-term thing. The book procrastination, block, malaise, etc., has ended!
