moving right along

Oh my friends, what a difference a day makes. Early this week, I was ready to give up, not just my current book, but perhaps as a writer. I was profoundly discouraged. A writer I respected highly had given me a pretty harsh critique of something I'd been working on for years, and with my tendency for self-defeat, I believed him. It seemed pointless to continue.

And then a friend's perspicacious note pointed out that the writer's style and mine are very different, perhaps he simply wanted to read something resembling what he himself would write. My writer friend agreed completely and apologized. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.

That writer friend, Wayson, had already asked to read some other pages from the memoir, the ones I was in any case much more sure about. And after reading, he wrote a warm note full of praise for those pages, how much he liked them, how powerful was the voice, how completely he'd been captivated. Okay, I thought with a touch of skepticism, there's a happy medium between this radiant encomium and "flogging a dead horse," but still, it was lovely to read.

And then I got notes from my editor, Colin. I'd sent him the first 50 pages which I'd recently rewritten, the ones Wayson had so much trouble with. Colin had trouble too, had done a lot of editing with a lot of suggestions, but they were purely technical. It was a blinding revelation. He adheres to a method of storytelling, "The Three Act Template," with fancy technical names - Act One, the Call to Adventure, the Intervening Mentor; Act Two, the Ordeal, the Mid-Act Breakthrough etc. Too coldly technical for me, I'd thought, but this time, he showed me how moving stuff around to even minimally follow the pattern would make the story stronger and guide the reader through the journey. Plus, he insisted I cut unnecessary stuff, even one long scene that has been in the manuscript from the beginning. And I did.

It's now nearly 10 p.m. I have spent the entire day, except for a half hour class at the Y and a meal or two - and an emergency rosé run to the LCBO - sitting in this chair, chopping, hacking, moving chunks of text around. Yesterday, I was going to apply for a job at McDonalds. Today, there's the semblance of a book.