Dear Reader,
Today has been mostly novel. Novel writing, that is.
Word Raccoon’s morning oatmeal requires ¾ cup of water, her usual measuring cup was dirty today, and she was not awake enough to futz back and forth between four and eight ounces in the larger measuring cup because the cup did not have a six ounce line OR fractions on it. So she gave it the heave ho and improvised.
Despite her “trying” time, just after breakfast without hesitation she opened her novel and began.
For half a minute she thought about renaming it, and while I haven’t completely ruled her choice out, I haven’t assented, either. Let’s see if she even remembers it next week, though.
We must confess, we truly are revising. We have tried to pretend that we are not, even to ourselves, but what else do you call it when you are drilling down a couple of levels in your prose?
(As my blog posts all too frequently display, first efforts are often not best efforts.)
While revising, I remembered a few sentences from an earlier draft that didn’t make it into this one, so I will be hunting for them. I have a revision list I’m adding to daily. I’m highlighting passages that don’t land yet, that aren’t what I mean to say and yet I don’t quite have the words for yet either.
Some events are (slightly) out of order, or need to be updated according to a changed plot point. For instance, three boxes have been condensed to one. (That’s all I can say about that for now.)
I spent quite a bit of time researching and then writing about James’s desk, one I’ve decided that his father built for him. I love the idea of that. In the novel, the father adores woodworking and yet has become a farmer because that’s what his father was.
Of course something that conspicuous can’t be just a desk, and so I have to make everything of it that I can but not too much, either. The desk must be a device. The desk must be a conversation. The desk must be a symbol. A poem. A prayer.
Similarly, I spent part of the afternoon researching what scent James’s younger sister, Susan, wears. I don’t want to tell you yet, because it’s a delicious tidbit that is not as hearty and sprawling as the tale of the desk, and so I don’t want to give it away.
You could say I’m decorating the prose now. But I’m also subbing in and out verbs to see which I prefer, so I’m working on multiple layers at once, and that’s fine. When I begin enjoying it again instead of feeling fearful and overwhelmed, I know all is well.
I reminded WR when she was a little concerned today (she has really learned to enjoy novel writing, finally!) that we have done this before. We know how to do this. We just have to forget what an act of courage writing is and do it already!
On the way to the library today, I took a picture of an awesome leaf that the internet tells me is from an American basswood.
At the library, I harvested some cherry tomatoes and some green ones, too, to fry tomorrow. (They encourage you to take what you can use, especially since the season is almost over. The tomatoes I grew are all gone now. But yay, Dad, I actually grew a few.)
They were not able to fix my Libby account right away, but they called me later hoping they had managed to fix it. They had, and I downloaded the Russo book and listened to part of it at the gym. It’s about a country music star. Hmm…been reading my novel/essay, has he? JUST KIDDING!! I WISH!
For lunch I made one of the items on the fabled use-it food island, a pasta salad, and opened the sherry vinegar to mix it with olive oil and added the tiny tomatoes that tasted somewhere between a fruit and a tomato, the last bites of summer, the kind that make you despise the winter’s forthcoming tomatoes trapped in a clamshell.
When I came out to the sun porch after dinner I was shocked to discover that the thermometer registered 95 degrees! I quickly opened a window and between that and a couple of fans, the temperature dropped. It’s still at 84 degrees now but with the fan on me, it’s bearable.
As much as I am into the novel right now, WR and I are going to have to have a power hour or two in order to get some things over the finish line tomorrow.
Then, the novel? WR thumps her tail and says yes, yes, yes!
We are still reading The Historian and when we texted our friend to tell her our experience with the three copies haunting our house, she had her own odd story about the novel. What a mysterious not-so-little book.
Drema (and Word Raccoon)