This year I have been writing a lot in long hand in a notebook which consisted of mostly new scenes that I envisioned and rewriting completely the beginning of the novel. At some point, I decided to write in first person present tense with more than one narrator. I had to decide if I could make that work, along with some other unusual forms, along with an intense close perspective that is almost stream of consciousness. So I wrote it out in long hand and then I spoke it aloud and made revisions. Now I am back to work on the laptop and not the Desktop where I do a lot of dictation and am attached to the Internet via social media.
The laptop has no email or social media. I never even installed Google Chrome, which is what I use on Desktop. I am one of those people who has to be at my desk, with all my things around me, dictionaries, my old Rodale Synonym Finder and my Chicago Manuel of Style, in order to write a novel. I have to be quiet and have lots of space to move and think. I read my work aloud a lot. I am writing and editing as I go, and it's pretty intense work. Highly focused work. Hard work.
This is where I am at. Everything else suffers for the art, I believe, at this moment. I know the book, the story. I have written drafts of this and that, I know what doesn't work and what I cannot do and it's not insane to say, what I am writing now is not what I started writing a couple of years ago in November of 2024. That is how my writing works.
I missed a year of writing in 2025. That can't be helped or regretted or even thought about. Only now. I have done so much work on this book that is not drafting the narrative and all I can say I am happy to be working on the laptop finally, to be crafting narrative as well as word choice. It's happening. I am going to finish another book. Smiling.
P.S. Today is my #1 son's birthday. We are having a party this coming Saturday.He's a wonderful son.
