Oh man - I just don’t know. I have no idea how to do this, when it goes on and on and on, day after day. I’m used to doing small things that I can see the beginning, middle and end right from where I’m standing. I’ve never had to WALK. Well, walk like THIS. I’ve done huge projects before, but never a novel. Never the “start here walk here and end up here” kind of thing. I have Will in a t-shirt in one paragraph, then have him unbuttoning his shirt in the next paragraph. I’ve already forgotten where I said the couch was, or the color of the house. I haven’t really described anybody yet, or had much dialogue, I don’t have much movement, and I don’t know how to pull things together, or how it will end. And I’ve already written 6600 words.
I’ve mentioned the progression of the tree morphing about three times, then the fourth time I made a shiny hollow part of the tree that Bill puts his hand through. That wasn’t there before! Help! But I just keep writing, even though stuff is messed up, trusting I can go back later and clean it all up. There are glimpses of brilliance. I love how those feel in my brain when I receive them. Like the mirror symbolism, and putting in quotes at the beginning of the chapters, all to do with what’s going on in the book. Yes, I know it’s not a new idea, but when I first thought of the I Corinthians quote about “for now we see in a mirror dimly; then, face to face.” The theme is starting to shape up - our connection to our souls in the form of two boys from different places that are actually the same being.
I like being able to weave in cool quotes, books, music, thoughts. I like being able to rewrite history so that “The Prophet” was on my current husband’s mother’s living room table, instead of talking about my first husband at all. In fact, that means my sweet husband gets to have his parents alive! But I’ve only talked about six characters, and I think there should be more, but I don’t know how to do that. I’ve been saying that a lot, but on the other hand I don’t want to read how to do it because then I may not be spontaneous anymore. Right now I don’t know anything, so I guess I’ll just keep writing and see what happens at the end of 150 pages. It’s messy along this road, but I don’t have time to clean up right now, nor do I want to clean up yet. I just want to keep making a literary mess, and trusting that at the end of it I’ll still have enough to have on precious little gem in there.