the distance

i never appreciated distance with writing. many writers will tell you that you need to let something sit before you go back and make changes. I never appreciated that, along with revision...I always said I hated revision. I still dislike it, but I appreciate its worth.

Right now I have 125 pages of a novel I started back in March. I was supposed to be done with the first draft on Sunday. I guess you could call this my first draft, but no. I still think I have another 75-100 pages left to go before what I imagined to be the narrative arc to be finished. But I'm sort of stuck, you see. I know why I'm stuck, I just haven't really found the way out. Kind of like when you're in a patch of really soft, muddy land in your car and your back tires just can't get enough friction to get out...so you're spinning and revving your engine and keep trying to get your wheels to turn but you just can't. You just can't get out. You know why you're stuck...sure. It's the mud. It's the lack of friction. But no matter how hard you press the gas, until you add that wood plank or until someone comes and pulls you out, you are going to go no where.

That's where I am.

But what I decided to do instead of waste my gas in a world where gas is $4.00 a gallon (or more!), was turn off the engine, rest. I decided not to call the guys to come and pull me out just yet.

Right now I'm slowly editing the first part of my novel, in what I imagine will have 5 parts, I believe. At first i thought three. Then I thought four. But I don't think a novel would feel right with four parts. I think either 3 or 5. So I'm going with five. I think. The first part is 47 pages, though with all of the text I'm writing in the novels and with some of the spaces I still have to fill, the questions I am able to ask now that I have some separation and some forsight on at least the next 75 pages, I think this section will definitely grow. It's growing. I see it. I sense it. My novel.

Some goals for the next few months:
Get to 150 pages BEFORE Cave Canem. That means 25 pages in a month. Come on. A page a day. That's nothing compared to my rate that I pumped out the first couple hundred pages!

I have to say before Cave Canem, because literally, I have a day after CC and then I'm off to Connecticut for my Soul Mountain retreat for 2.5 weeks. There, I would like to have my draft FINISHED as well as a chapbook. And some new headway on my Palestine project which is looking more and more like a realistic thing.

Other things I would like for the second half of 2008 as far as career and writing go:

A literary agent. Know one? Send them my way.
Book Five Poetry readings in 2009.
Get more fiction accepted for publication. Which means write more fiction, send more fiction out!
More poetry publications.

Yep.