A Load of Relief
I’ve been editing the novel in progress, The Constant. It’s the first go-through of the initial complete manuscript. Naturally, there are issues. Things were removed, facts and timelines confirmed — like descriptions and locations — and sections were worked over to make them punchier and tighter. All was going well. I was averaging twenty-five to fifty pages a day, comfortable progress. Then, on page three hundred twenty-seven, I began reading the chapter, Thelma & Louise. I knew within paragraphs that it didn’t work and began the struggle to fix it.
I initially approached it as a wordsmithing problem. Nope; wasn’t it. It was deeper. I wrestled for several days about why this chapter bothered me. The issue was a constant 24/7 thorn for more than a week. I tried working on around it, buy my mind was fused to the issue. I eventually decided it was too much of an information dump and would break it up into more digestible bites. Growing comfortable with that idea, evolving it by establishing where I’d cut it up, I began working on that.
That choice caused another problem, though. No answer arrived to it. Additionally, I found I was adding more material than I wanted to this story aspect. As I wrote, I liked what I wrote, but not that I was adding it.
Around day fourteen, three days ago, two answers came almost concurrently about what to do and how to do it. They arrived after I’d gotten up to let Papi out of the house and fed sick cat because he yelled in the middle of the night. After writing it in my head for a while before returning to sleep, I immediately began working on the revisions when I got up that morning. It was intense.
I finished it today, a satisfying moment. Whether the result will hold up to further reading and revising is another matter. When I wrote the original chapter, in two settings, the results pleased me. But this is all part of the exploratory and creative process for finding story and writing a novel for me.
Cheers
The Surviving Dream
I was out with others. We were in endless stores but outside, in rolling, emerald green hills bathed in sunshine. I was happy but I was aware that it was a dire situation. Everyone was aware. What measures did we need to take? How could we survive?
Then, boom, all were dead.
Then I was getting back up. I was aware it was a dire situation. What measures did we need to take? Okay, I’d just died, so what we’d done didn’t work. We needed to do something else. Then, boom, something was coming, and we all died.
I was back after a second, in the same situation, trying to figure out what to do, then it all happened again.
I spoke with others. How can we stop this cycle? Others were certain that it couldn’t be stopped, they saw no way that it could. But a man in uniform stepped forward.
He was dressed like a WWII Nazi officer, grey uniform and hat, black epaulets, knee-high shiny black boots, in a movie. “Actually, it can be stopped,” he said. “You just need the right place to hide and the perfect timing.”
Before I could question him more, he said, “Ah, here it comes again.”
I saw something coming, or more correctly, looking down and across the stores on the grassy hills, I saw its effects on the people and world. I warned others that it was coming as I took cover with a cat. I died.
Born again after that, I joked with the cat, “Well, that didn’t work. Did you die, too?” The cat didn’t answer. Then, knowing the cycle was short, I began hunting for the next place to hide. This time, I seemed more aware of the threat coming toward me. It rippled through the people and fields like a light breeze blowing through a rows of wheat. Watching it come up, I timed my move and stepped aside.
I’m not certain if I died or not. There wasn’t a moment of awareness of dying, but I was again considering the situation, the German officer beside me. “No, it’s not that easy,” he said in a jocular voice.
I was dubious of him. “I think you’re trying to distract me. Who are you? Why are you even here?” I had the sense that he was there for misdirection. He was there to stop me from seeing and thinking.
An event was coming again. Picking up my cat, I turned my back and hunkered down under a table.
The dream ended.
Surprise!
A moment ambushed today that I really wasn’t expecting. I finished writing, editing, and revising draft number ten of April Showers 1921.
I’d finished writing the novel, and it ‘felt’ correct, a coherent and complete tapestry of time, characters, settings, events, and story.
I was pretty damn astonished. Just like reading an entertaining book, writing a book that entertains me leaves me breathless and lost, wanting more while processing, it’s over. It’s good. It’s done.
Draft number ten is a hefty boy, let me tell you, six hundred ten pages in MS Word, one hundred eighty thousand plus words. It’d required eight months, my gosh, almost to the date I’d officially started it after a dream in early January. I’d first mentioned it in a January 27, 2019 post. Eight months of thinking about it, writing, revising, researching, editing, processing, and editing, revising, and re-writing again and again. It’s odd and startling to realize that I’ve written all those pages in that time, and doesn’t count all those pages that’ve been removed during the revising process. It was just such a short spurt of time, and just a few hours each day of typing.
Now, I’m contemplating, what do I do with myself? This is my writing time, but I’ve finished writing the novel. It’s like getting out of school early. Such possibilities! Should I go eat? Well, I’m not hungry; this is my writing time. Tell someone? Well, of course, I posted this, to share with my online friends. Many of you are writers and appreciate the satisfaction of writing and finishing. I think you, of all, will most understand, and have been quite supportive.
I suppose I’ll take a break today, and then return tomorrow, and start going through my notes to confirm that I’m not leaving something out there hanging. Then…well, we’ll see.
But, um, yeah, I guess I’m done writing like crazy for today.
Yeah.
Michael Seidel, writer 