It’s been a while and I’ve had what could be considered a prolonged gutcheck moment on this project.
Forever is my second novel length project* and I’ve been trawling through the second draft for a few months now. Just before Christmas I ran into a fairly large structural problem that made continuing rather difficult and so, a few false starts not withstanding, I stopped. Since then I’ve been banging out first drafts of short stories while my mind pondered the cul-de-sac up which it had merrily wandered in trying to improve the much flawed first draft.
I am pleased to report that somewhere around the beginning of last week it reached a solution and I started work again on Forever. It’s early days and coming back to the manuscript feels a lot like coming back to an old friend after a major argument: we’re pleased to see each other but nervous about another embarrassing falling out. I’m going carefully and I don’t want to jinx it but I can see a way though that wasn’t there before.
Fingers crossed.
In other news, the first week without television has passed pretty uneventfully but has not produced the dramatic increases in productivity I’d hoped. To be fair: this is probably due to having other stuff on and Britain’s collective confusion in appearing to have swapped weather with the east coast of America. This weekend’s output has, however, been rather good and if I can sustain that pace going into next week then there’s a good chance this experiment may turn into a habit.
* My first novel length project, The Scarred God, is currently undergoing final touches before I start trying to sell it. Another task that is taking longer than it should. So it goes.