Thanks to Laraine Herring, author of Writing Begins with the Breath, I now have a name for where I am in the novel-writing process. She calls it "the Texas Period," thanks to the time she drove across Texas with her family and thought it might go on forever. It's just like reaching the middle part of writing a book, she says, "where the enthusiasm of the beginning has waned, but the end is not in sight, and you really, truth be told, have very little idea of what you've got to work with (though you're sure it's junk)."
All judgments about Texas aside, this metaphor captures the middle phase of writing a novel perfectly. Some days I am cruising down the wide open highway with the wind in my hair, while other days fellow travellers fly by at blistering speeds as I sweat and labor just trying to keep up with the tumbleweeds. Last week, I pulled into a scenic overlook (do they have those in Texas?) to look back at where I've been so far and to preview the road ahead. This week, I'm taking a little detour to revisit some older scenes and do a little trimming to tighten them up. But I'll be back on the road soon, foot firmly on the accelerator (didn't they just up the speed limit to 85 mph on one Texas highway?), generating more of these middle pages.
The first time I read Herring's book, almost two years ago, I jotted a note in the margin of this page: "Haven't crossed the border into Texas yet." So it's nice to know I am making progress. Maybe it's time to post a map of Texas on my writing room wall and pin one of those little cars from the game of Life to it. Then every time I write -- whether it's a few paragraphs or a whole chapter -- I get to move the car a few miles.
Whatever it takes to keep the motivation flowing...
No comments:
Post a Comment