Here I am, a week at home, with just my enormous manuscript and me. Dear Reader, it's almost 600 pages. I'm on my third, or fourth, or fifth revision, depending on what you count as a revision. During revision, you love the story, you lose the story, you loathe the story. Then you repeat. Each time you experience something like terror. You wonder if you are making it better, or worse. You wonder if you're answering your readers questions. You wonder if you will ever finish this book. Somehow, you do. Somehow, after five or ten or fifty revisions, it's truly finished. A story. A story that works, that brings characters to life and explores the human condition and makes people nod their heads and clutch their hearts and wring their hands.
Here in providence, spring appears to have finally sprung. Out my window: trees with pink blossoms and trees with green leaves. Sunshine. Blue sky.
All day, every day, this week I pick up a pen and rewrite, page by page, scene by scene, word by word. And I watch my story start to bloom.
