Thursday, May 15, 2014

That was intense.

Another very long, very exhausting session of rewriting.

As the weather got nicer and nicer over the last two days outside, I was retreating further and further into the rabbit hole of my mind.

It was almost zen-like.  I went to bed completely drained,

Fucking Faerylander.

It was necessary I think to see if the narrative worked as a reader might experience it, and the only way to do that was to try to get through the whole book, beginning to end, in a couple of sessions.  Making the book flow the way it needed to flow.

I got about 3/4ths of the way through.  Enough to get a pretty strong sense of it, and I think it works.

I will finish on Friday.  There is one more chapter that needs extensive rewriting, but the rest is fine.  This is the point in the book I've mentioned before where all the flaws accumulate and I throw up my hands.

This time, I get there and went.  "It's good."  It feels like a complete book.  Not flawless, but it holds up.

I'll have to go over it one more time, when I've let some time pass.

But the basic structure is there.

That's it.  I will never reorganize this book again.  This is the version I go with.  All words, sentence and paragraphs are fair game, but I'm not moving scenes or chapters. 

Again, I have to trust that if the narrative works for me, it will work for the reader.

1 comment:

Duncan McGeary said...

At the store today. It's a vacation!