The Writing Moment
Still editing a novel-in-progress. Rev 7 remains underway for Memories of Why. I finished page 450 of 575 today. Don’t know if I’ll do a rev 8 until after I read the final chapters. I remember how I ended it but I’m not sure that ending is satisfying. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I jumped into writing a new novel back on July 19, 2024. It just sucked me in. The working title is Gravity’s Emotions. As it’s a style and kind of novel that I don’t usually write, it stretches my nerves to breaking while engrossing and worrying me. Eighty pages have been written, so it’s been going fast. Breaking a standard rule, I share bits of the novel in walk off lines with my wife. Some of what I tell her freaks her out. That makes me giddy.
But I also need to return to finish Darla. Friends read the first sixty pages that I dashed off and want to read more of it.
It’s so entertaining and stimulating right now, imagining, thinking, writing, editing, revising, planning. I could easily see myself going non-stop writing and editing, but life needs pull me back into life’s embrace.
The Writing Moment
Revising again, and it’s a good damn thing. I’d modified a story line. This resulted in two new chapters during the last go-around. OMG, they need work. Stiff and ugly, I need to spend time and thought with them before moving on. Bad enough that when I read partway through one yesterday, I shut down to regroup. LOL.
Well, it happens. They were written in a rush and worked for the moment as part of a draft, but they’re subpar for a finished manuscript.
The Writing Moment
Finished editing and revising the current novel in progress. It’s either the sixth or seventh iteration. Doesn’t matter.
My vision for it has clarified through the process of writing and then reading and changing it. One storyline was excised as meandering, dull, and convoluted. Firmer insights into relationships, terminology, and setting crystallized, leading to more slices. Explanations and clarifications were thinned. Characters and relationships found sharper evolution.
All good. I enjoy the manuscript and that means something to me. It is lengthy and meaty, and I wonder and worry about its length. But then I shrug, because nothing emerges for me to deliberately remove.
Now I’ll begin editing and revising again. This time I’m pursuing more of the novel’s voice and feel. I suspect — it’s a feeling — that this will be the last go around. And then I’ll begin pursuing publication.
A friend — another writer — asked me what titles I would compare it to. And gosh, I came up with nothing. I have some vague notions. Historic fiction, science fiction, and fantasy all combined in this speculative effort. And it has stories and characters embedded in it whose stories I’d like to pursue. Like Humans. Humans’ are in the book’s forefront and background, as they were moved to isolation in a forbidden zone long before events in this book. They are important to the novel because the primary antagonist is a Martian who loves Humans and conquers others to spread Human cultures. That’s one reason the rest of the civilizations consider her so dangerous. The other is that she’s proven difficult to kill.
There’s also the main character’s stepmother and her complicated story. I’d like to pursue exploring her and how she developed into the person she is. Then, there’s the main character’s relationship to his sister, and what happened to her in parallel to him, and where she is and if she’s still a cat.
But then, there are also so many other projects sitting in the wings, waiting for me to come back to them. And they’re all stories, concepts, ideas, which interest me.
It’s all fun, reading, writing, editing, imagining, thinking, the life of a writer.
The Writing Moment
Revision work on the novel in progress, Memories of Why, continues. I work on it everyday. 40% completed, I’m being a tortoise in this endeavor, slow and steady. Not infrequently, I read and revise a chapter three or four times. I mostly did this because it was overwritten to hell and needs to have overbearing words cut away.
But it’s satisfying and entertaining, and keeps me out of trouble, so I’ll keep on keeping on.
The Writing Moment
A day when the writing and editing ‘goes well’ leaves me energized and optimistic. Wish I could bottle it as an elixir and drink a bit every morning.
Michael Seidel, writer 