Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Stuck

I'm stuck.

I've been working on -- that is, wrestling with -- a chapter from my novel for far too long. Spinning, I guess you could say. I was away from the novel for a while, then I was sick for a couple of weeks, and now I'm having some trouble getting reacquainted with the book.

I keep going over the opening paragraph of this particular chapter. You'd think it would be perfect by now. It is not.

I'm also looking at other chapters I've written from this character's point of view (about 80 or so pages) and trying to determine what, if anything, is salvageable. (Is is all shit? Should it all go? Maybe. Maybe I'm wasting my time by sifting through old pages and drafts, when I should be forging ahead with completely new material. And yet, looking at the older material, there's some pretty decent stuff there. Also some pretty lousy stuff.)

This particular chapter comes about two-thirds of the way into part 1 of the novel. It's the last chapter to be finished for the current draft of part 1 that I'm working on. So maybe part of it is being afraid to finish this chapter, because next I need to make some major surgical revisions once this draft is finished. I know what needs to be fixed, which is good; but the task ahead also seems daunting.

On a more positive and less neurotic note:

A while back I mentioned that The Sun accepted an excerpt from this novel. I recently found out that the piece will be appearing in the July issue.

July. That's pretty soon.

5 comments:

Ethel Rohan said...

July is pretty close, congratulations. As for the novel, I'll tell you the same thing I'm telling myself these days: Just do it.

Andrew Roe said...

Thanks, Ethel. And that's simple, solid advice. I'm in a better place now than I was when I wrote this post.

Anonymous said...

Just finished reading the piece titled in the Sun. Loved it. Luring, captivating, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. You really have something here. Keep tackling the novel; it needs to be finished.

Anonymous said...

Grrr, where is my editor? Please remove the word, "titled" from above comment.

Andrew Roe said...

Thanks for the encouragement, KristenAC. Much appreciated! So glad you liked "Accident."