This is how I spent yesterday:
Reading. Editing. Hunched over the keyboard, squinting, back aching. Pause to change diaper. Pause to heat bottle. Pause to play. Feed. Clean. Back to reading. Editing. Hunching and typing. Feeling the end in sight - knowing it's in me, finally.
Finally.
After nearly a year and a half of living with these characters, I have the first draft completed. It's the longest attempt at a short-story that I've done and as a story, it has morphed, numerous times - both intriguing and infuriating me.
If you have the time, the first draft can be read, here.
Now, I'm going to go and do the million things I didn't yesterday. Check various email accounts, blogs, websites. Resume my normal routine. Enjoy having my thought process uncluttered with the what-if's of these characters. Go to work for a few hours. Shower.
Perhaps not in that order.
Reading. Editing. Hunched over the keyboard, squinting, back aching. Pause to change diaper. Pause to heat bottle. Pause to play. Feed. Clean. Back to reading. Editing. Hunching and typing. Feeling the end in sight - knowing it's in me, finally.
Finally.
After nearly a year and a half of living with these characters, I have the first draft completed. It's the longest attempt at a short-story that I've done and as a story, it has morphed, numerous times - both intriguing and infuriating me.
If you have the time, the first draft can be read, here.
Now, I'm going to go and do the million things I didn't yesterday. Check various email accounts, blogs, websites. Resume my normal routine. Enjoy having my thought process uncluttered with the what-if's of these characters. Go to work for a few hours. Shower.
Perhaps not in that order.
4 Comments:
Melanie, this story is breathtaking. I can feel your heart in the words. It's amazing.
Sigh...just finished reading it. I could really identify with certain emotions and experiences, for example Lily's feeling of reverence standing at her father's door, the smell in there, the secrets buzzing in the air.
I actually had a doughy stepmom growing up...at about that age...
I couldn't stop reading once I started.
It's interesting, having a window into your creative process.
I know how much work this all is, both at the keyboard and awake in bed, thinking, re-thinking, constructing. What beautiful fruit your work has born.
I am tempted to say "It's great" (because it is!) but that just doesn't begin to express the total effect it had on me. There's good writing, and then there's good writing that has an emotional resonance. Your stories have that pull, that quality that gets the reader invested.
Hooray!!
xo
Thank you both, not for being so sweet in your comments, but for taking the time out of your hectic lives to even read the first draft of something. I'm touched and flattered and blessed, I guess.
Blessed to have such thoughtful friends.
My comments over on the draft page Mella.
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