My lack of posting here of late is actually a positive thing. I've stopped languishing in post-Philippines physical illness, exhaustion, and, I admit, a little depression at the sheer scope of inequities in the world, and I'm knuckling back down to work on a revision of my book manuscript. This, my first book, is a strange but not completely unpleasant experience for me. I remember with great clarity the day that I dotted the final i's on the first draft. It was a cool summer day in Nova Scotia with scattered rainshowers and dense fog. I took a walk on the beach and then I took a long, hot bath with a glass of single malt scotch set up on a little table beside me. For a few hours, I was the king of the world. Then, some time not long after this, a friend of mine congratulated me on having finished what he called Phase One.
I didn't really understand what he meant at the time, but it wasn't so welcome a message. I had just finished a BOOK not a PHASE. Now I get it. What it takes to understand what you want to say is the writing of a first draft. And then, having figured out your message, your theme, your thesis, you're all ready to.....write your book. It's unfair in a way, that finishing is really starting, and that I'll have to spend much of this holiday season buried in my office, poring over manuscript. On the other hand, this is surely a lot less traumatic than that moment, not so many months from now, when the final manuscript will leave my hands for the last time. Scary thought. But I know it'll be good. I'm excited by the way things are shaping up.
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